THE   RISE  OF  THE 
AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

A  Philosophical  Interpretation  of  American  History 


BY 

ROLAND  G.  USHER,  PH.D. 

M  | » 

AUTHOR    OF    *'PAN-GERMAXISM,"    "THE    RECONSTRUCTION    OF   THE    ENGLISH 

CHURCH,"  "THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  HIGH 
COMMISSION,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK 

THE  CENTURY  CO. 

1914 


Copyright,  1914,  by 
THE  CENTURY  Co. 


Publish**,  April,  1914 


TO 

THE  FAIREST  AND  LOVELIEST  OF  HER  SEX 
MY  DAUGHTER  FLORENCE, 
ON  HER  THIRD   BIRTHDAY 


PREFACE 

In  these  days  of  specialization,  the  community  is  divided 
for  nearly  all  purposes  into  only  two  classes — the  specialists 
and  the  laymen;  and  all  the  specialists  are  laymen  in  every 
subject  but  their  own.  In  those  manifold  subjects  in  which 
he  is  a  layman,  the  modern  reader  demands  a  lucid,  vivid  ac 
count  of  results  and  not  of  processes,  a  brief  statement  of 
the  meaning  of  the  development,  which  can  be  deduced  from 
the  array  of  facts  and  dates  marching  down  upon  him  out 
of  the  past.  Assuming  these  facts  to  be  true  and  important, 
what  do  they  mean,  he  asks?  Assuming  these  to  be  the  es 
sential  parts  of  the  puzzle,  what  is  the  picture  like?  A 
specialist  himself,  the  reader  knows  the  value  of  processes, 
but  he  has  neither  the  time,  inclination,  nor  skill  to  perform 
the  historical  process  for  himself  with  even  adequate  mate 
rials.  He  asks  for  results  first,  for  broad  outlines  and  fun 
damental  factors,  and  is  willing  to  waive  for  the  moment  the 
question  of  authorities  and  the  verification  of  data.  He  wishes 
to  learn  at  once  what  competent  authorities  consider  to  be 
true  and  cares  comparatively  little  by  what  precise  road  they 
reached  their  conclusions. 

In  writing  this  book  it  has  therefore  been  my  aim  to  give 
the  reader  a  lucid  account  of  results  and  not  of  processes; 
to  explain  briefly  the  meaning  of  the  facts  of  national  de 
velopment,  rather  than  to  chronicle  the  mere  sequence  of 
events — for,  from  my  point  of  view,  the  founding  of  colonies, 
the  granting  of  charters,  the  battles,  debates  and  constitu 
tions  are  not  in  themselves  history,  but  simply  the  material 


PREFACE 

out  of  which  history  must  be  made.  I  conceive  it  to  be  my 
business,  not  to  describe  the  pieces  of  the  puzzle-picture,  nor 
to  tell  the  reader  their  number  nor  even  their  relationship, 
but  to  give  him  some  point  of  view  where  the  pieces  cease 
to  be  pieces  and  blend  together  into  a  picture.  I  believe  that 
the  essential  and  elementary  "facts"  in  history  are  not  the 
actual  events  but  the  more  complex  conclusions  which  are  to 
be  deduced  from  a  series  of  such  events. 

My  indebtedness  to  the  instruction  and  writings  of  my 
teacher,  Edward  Channing,  to  the  works  of  Rhodes,  Van 
Tyne,  Beard,  Turner,  Hart  and  many  others  will  be  only  too 
manifest.  Here  and  there  I  have  added  foot-notes  to  ex 
pand  and  elucidate  the  text  but  without  any  idea  of  furnish 
ing  adequate  information  of  the  extent  or  whereabouts  of  the 
available  or  valuable  material  upon  the  subject.  The  Guide 
to  American  History  by  Channing,  Hart,  and  Turner,  the 
bibliographies  in  Hart's  American  Nation,  will  give  the 
reader,  anxious  to  verify  or  expand  my  narrative,  access  to 
the  literature  of  the  subject.  I  have  used  only  material  that 
is  accessible  to  all,  except  on  a  few  minor  points,  and  I  do 
not  claim  any  novelty  or  originality  for  this  volume  or  for 
the  ideas  expressed  in  it,  beyond  the  general  point  of  view 
and  a  much  fuller  treatment  and  different  emphasis  than  is 
usual  in  brief  histories  upon  such  topics  as  States'  sover 
eignty,  the  growth  of  nationality,  commercial  relations  with 
the  West  Indies,  the  influence  of  economic  and  geographical 
factors,  and  the  growth  of  democracy. 

Washington  University,  St.  Louis,  January,  1914. 


CONTENTS 


I  PAGE 

THE  MEANING  OF  AMERICAN  HISTORY  3-10 

^The  place  of  the  United  States  in  universal  history 3 

Its  place  in  European  history 3 

Its  chief  subject  the  achieving  of  nationality 5 

^Definition   of   a   nation 5-6 

Slowness  of  national  growth  in  America 6 

The  Revolution  and   States'  rights  anti-national 8 

Nationality  achieved  through   the  Civil   War;    Lincoln  the  father          » 

of  American  nationality 9 

II 

SPANISH  AND  FRENCH  FAILURES  11-17 

Spanish  and  French  exert  no  influence  on  the  history  of  the  United 

States 11 

Explanation  lies  in  their  purpose  in  coming 12 

in  their  character 14 

in  the  strength  of  the  Indians 14 

in  the  weakness  of  Spain 15 

The  French  in  the  South  and  in  the  St.  Lawrence 16 

III 

THE  ENGLISH  GENESIS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  18-30  , 

The  United   States  made  possible  by  the   control  of   the  Atlantic 

acquired  by  England  in   1588 18 

Emigration  was  the  result  of  economic  forces  which  made  people 

willing  to  come 19 

and  of  religious  beliefs 21 

and  of  the  reports  of  explorers 22 

The  settlement  of  Jamestown 23 

The  Pilgrims  and  the  settlement  of  Plymouth 24 

The  Puritans  and  the  settlement  of  Boston 25 

Other  colonies  founded  before  1660 §6 

Colonies  were  made  permanent 

by  the  geographical  advantages  of  the  Atlantic  coast   ...  26 

by  the  absence  of  powerful  Indian  tribes 27 

by  the  size  of  Massachusetts 27 

by  maize,  tobacco,  fish,  and  furs 28; 

IV 

THE  ECONOMIC  GROWTH  OF  THE  COLONIES  31-44^ 

The  most  fundamental  cause  of  the  Revolution  lies  in  the  economic 

strength  of  the  colonies,  in   1776 31 

The  extent  of  the  growth  in  population 32 

Rapidity  of  growth  explained  by  immigration 33 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreign  elements:   Germans,  Scotch-Irish,  Portuguese      .      .      .      .34 

Indented  servants,  criminals,  adventurers 36 

Radicalism  and  restless  spirit  of  immigrants 36 

Only  little  patches  of  settlement  by  1760 37 

Only  common  interests:    the  lack  of  a  medium  of  exchange  with 

Europe 38 

and  a  dependence  upon  the  West  India  trade 39 

Character  of  colonial  commerce 39 

The  Navigation  Acts 41 

Smuggling 42j 

The  result  was  a  creditor  and  debtor  class  in  each  colony   .      .      .431 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  45-60 

Second  fundamental  cause  of  the  Revolution  lies  in  the  ability  of 

the  colonies  to  govern  themselves 45 

^Democracy  a  natural  indigenous  growth 45 

Town  government  in  Massachusetts 46  j 

County  government  at  the  South 48 1 

Origin  of  the  belief  in  States'  rights 49 

Origin  of  State  governments 50 

^Evolution  of  representative  government .  52 

*  The  wilderness  produces  essentially  the  same  forms  in  all  colonies  .  55  ( 

trraft,  corruption,  and  "rings" 56 

Divergence    of    institutional    development    between    England    and 

America 57 

The  men  produced  by  colonial  democracy:   Washington  ....  58 

Franklin 59, 

VI 

STATES'  SOVEREIGNTY  61-72 

Third  fundamental  cause  of  the  Revolution  lies  in  the  determination 
of  Americans  from  the  first  to  govern  themselves  without 

actual  interference  from  England 61 

The  Colonies  always  considered  themselves  sovereign 61 

Nullification  in  Massachusetts  in  1665 63 

Antiquity  of  opposition  to  English  interference 64 

Reasons  for  inefficiency  of  English  supervision .      .  65 

Nullification    of   the   Navigation   Acts 68 

English  origin  of  schemes  for  colonial  union .69 

Invariably  defeated  by  principle  of  States*  sovereignty   .      .  .70 

Entire  lack  of  nationality  in  1760   . 71 

VII 

THE  IMMEDIATE  CAUSES  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  73-91 

The  expulsion  of  the  French  from  Canada  made  English  assistance 

unnecessary  and.  actual  independence  'possible    ....  74 

Danger  of  Indian  uprisings  past 76 

Active    opposition    roused    by    English    plan»    to    replace    States' 

sovereignty  by  administrative  union 77 

by  the  decision  to  enforce  the  Navigation  Acts  and  so  destroy 

colonial  commerce  with  the  West  Indies  .      .      .     .      .      .  81    , 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Prompt  nullification  of  the  Sugar  and  Stamp  Acts   .      .      .      .,     .  82 

The  American   idea  of  the  English  Constitution 86 

Taxation  without  representation 88 

The  real  justification  of  the  Revolution 90 

VIII 
THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RESISTANCE  92-105  j 

Resistance  neither  national  nor  spontaneous 92 

Generality  of  the  belief  that  it  was  inexpedient 92 

Resistance  before  1772  sporadic  and  unorganized 94 

Armed  resistance  organized  by  Samuel  Adams  through  Committees 

of  Correspondence 97 

The  Boston  Tea  Party  a  demonstration  of  intent  to  resist  ...  99 

The  Coercive  Acts  of  1774 101 

Active  preparations  for  resistance  begun 102 

Lexington  and  Concord 103 

Bunker  Hill 104 

IX 

FIRST  ATTEMPTS  AT  PERMANENT  ORGANIZATION  106-122 

States  and  individuals  stand  aloof 106 

Real  obstacle  in  way  of  cooperation  a  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the 

relations  of  States  to  each  other 107 

All  existing  organizations  extra-legal 107 

Tacit  acceptance  of  Congress  and  Committees  in  1775  by  the  people  109 

Difficulties  in  way  of  instituting  central  government 110 

Great  accession  of  strength  from  adhesion  to  the  Revolution  of  the 

debtor  party  in  each  colony 113 

Pressure  put  upon  creditors 114 

Confiscations,  robbery 116 

States'  sovereignty  the  real  obstacle  in  the  way  of  the  Revolution  117 
Independence  understood  to  mean  cooperation  through  some  form  of 

central  government 117 

The  Declaration  of  Independence  affirms  States'  sovereignty  .  .  .118 

Formation  of  State  constitutions 119 

Central  administration  begun 120 

The  French  Alliance  and  the  Confederation 121 

X 

WHY  WE  WON  THE  REVOLUTION  123-139  \ 

The  war  was  not  won  by  superior  force  or  generalship       .      .      .      .  123    ' 

A  record  of  defeats.     Lack  of  popular  support 124 

The  victory  due  to  the  fact  that  the  English  did  not  push  the  war 

till  1778 127 

to  the  width  of  the  Atlantic   ....            131 

to  the  strategical  geography  of  the  Atlantic  coast    ....  132 
to  the  ability  of  Washington  and  Greene  at  wilderness-cam 
paigning       133    , 

XI 

THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  140-150  — 

The  country  grew  populous  and  wealthy.     A  comparatively  small 

number  of  individuals  bore  the  costs  and  losses  of  the  war  140 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The  balance  of  wealth  and  political  power  swung  from  the  old 
creditor  to  the  old  debtor  party,  putting  the  radicals  in 

the    majority 144 

The  victory  decided  that  England  should  not  influence  the  decision 
of  American  issues  and  put  the  creation  of  a  central  gov 
ernment,  the  settlement  of  commercial  and  monetary 
questions,  the  definition  of  the  relations  of  the  States  to 
each  other  into  the  hands  of  the  radicals,  who  declined  to 
meet  financial  and  treaty  obligations  and  adopted  States' 
sovereignty  as  the  basis  of  central  and  State  government  146 

XII 
THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD  151-167 

The  definitive  failure  of  the  radical  policy 151 

Difficulties  were  superficial  and  economic 152 

Accentuated  by  the  commercial  crisis 152 

by  overproduction 153 

by  hostile  state  legislation 155 

by  dislocation  of  business  through  paper  money,   interference 

with  the  collection  debts 156 

Necessity  of  administrative  reform 158 

Strong  central  government  a  prerequisite 160 

Radical  defects  of  the  Confederation .      .160 

Economic  and  geographical  factors  making  for  union 162 

The  Federal  Convention  called 166 

XIII 
•  THE  CONSTITUTION  168-181 

The  Constitution  based  upon  equality  of  condition 169 

Character  of  American  life  in  1787 169 

xThe  people  made  sovereign 172 

/'  Relation  of  the  States  to  the  Federal  government 173 

Relation  of  the  Federal  government  to  the  people 174 

'The  people"  limited  to  men  of  property  and  good  character  .      .      .175 

Powers  conferred  on  Federal  government 175 

Federal  government  to  be  controlled: 

by  the  separation  of  powers 176 

by  reservation  of  local  government  to  the  States 176 

by  checks  and  balances 178 

Opposition  to  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution 179 

First  elections  and  the  inauguration  of  Washington 180 

XIV 

THE  ESTABLISHMENT  OF  PERMANENT  ADMINISTRATION 

182-195 

The  success  of  the  new  government  due  to  economic  conditions  .      .   182 
Hamilton's  solution  of  the  administrative  issues: 

the  funding  of  the  Federal  and  State  debts    ...  .      .    184 

the  provision  of  a  Federal  income  from  the  tariff  and  excise 

taxes 188 

the  payment  of  the  army 188 

the  provision  for  currency  and  fiscal  control  through  the   na 
tional  Bank 188 

Jefferson  reconciles  the  Anti-Federalists  to  the  Constitution  by  his 

principle  of  loose  construction   .      .      . 190 


pres 
Eml 


CONTENTS 

XV  PAGE 

THE  WAR  OF  1812  196-210 

Its  causes :  as  a  war  between  England  and  America  in  the  economic 
dependence  of  America  upon  the  European  and  West  India 

trade 196 

as  a  war  between  parties  in  America  in  the  division  of  interests 
between  the  commercial  and  agricultural  classes,  and 
between  the  English  and  French  sympathizers  ....  201 
The  incidents  leading  to  the  outbreak:  the  Jay  Treaty,  the  move 
ment  to  annex  Canada,  rights  of  neutral  shipping,  the 
>ress-gang,  the  Louisiana  Purchase,  the  Chesapeake,  the 

ibargo 198 

The  United  States  defeated: 

by  the  geographical  factors  which  won  the  Revolution   .      .      .   206 
by  the  outbreak  of  civil  war  and  the  attempt  of  New  England 
to    secede 207 

XVI 

THE  AMERICAN  SYSTEM  211-228 

Results  of  the  War  of  1812  were  to  make  clear  the  consequences 

of  our  economic  dependence  upon  Europe 211 

Cotton:  its  history;  and  growth  to  1815 212 

Manufacturing  in  New  England  the  creation  of  the  War  .  .  .  .213 

Demand  for  roads  and  canals  in  the  West 214 

The  demand  for  the  protective  tariff 215 

The  demand  for  the  extension  of  slavery:  the  Missouri  Compromise  218 

The  demand  for  Internal  Improvements 220 

Effect  of  protection  and  Internal  Improvements  upon  the  interests 

of  the  South 221 

The  Union  and  the  Constitution  attacked  by  Randolph  and  Hayne  223 
Webster  proclaims  the  national  significance  of  the  Constitution,  1830  225 
The  difficulties  compromised :  the  demands  of  all  refused  ....  227 

XVII 
JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  229-240 

Causes  of  Jeffersonianism  and  Jacksonianism 229 

The  Twelfth  Amendment  and  the  popular  election  of  the  President  230 
'  New  difficulties  and  the  creation  of  the  caucus  to  obviate  them  .      .231 

The  caucus  robs  the  people  of  the  right  to  choose 232 

Jackson  against  the  caucus 232 

The  origin  of  national  parties 233 

Jacksonian  and  Jeffersonian  democracy  contrasted 234 

Webster  shows  that  the  Constitution  made  the  people  sovereign  and 

that  States'  sovereignty  was  undemocratic 235 

Growth  of  Committees  in  Congress  and  of  the  Speakership  .      .      .   236 

Interpretation  of  the  Constitution  by  Marshall 237 

Democratic  radicalism  in  the  States 238 

The  Spoils   System   introduced 23"8 

Subconscious  growth  of  nationality 239 

xvm 

THE  TWO  DIVERGING  SECTIONS  241-256 

The  possibilities  of  cotton-culture 241 

Effects  of  cotton  on  slavery:  methods  of  culture; 242 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

value  of  land  and  slaves  trebled ;  demand  for  virgin  soil  .  .  .  243 

Expansion  and  growth  of  the  Gulf  States 243 

The  South  becomes  a  country  of  one  crop 244 

Statistics  of  Alabama  in  1850 245 

Agitation  about  slavery:  Anti-slavery 245 

Arguments  concerning  slavery  compared 246 

Character  of  development  in  North  and  West  of  diversified  industry 

and  scientific  intensive  agriculture 248 

Machinery  and  transportation;  canals  and  railroads 249 

New  complexity  of  economic  fabric 250 

Results  upon  social  and  intellectual  life 251 

Geographical  and  geological  factors  causing  a  division  of  economic 

life  along  Mason  and  Dixon's  line  and  the  Ohio  River  .  252 

Results  of  these  factors  upon  institutional  life 255 

The  Civil  War  a  misunderstanding  between  honest,  sincere  men  .  .  256 

XIX 

TEXAS  AND  THE  MEXICAN  WAR  257-268 

By  1835  it  was  clear  to  the  South  that  the  profits  of  cotton-culture 
were  limited  only  by  the  amount  of  virgin  soil,  and  that 
the  supply  of  virgin  soil  east  of  the  Mississippi  and  south 
of  the  Missouri  Compromise  line  was  already  exhausted  257 

Movement  to  colonize  and  then  to  annex  Texas 259 

The  Mexican  War  adds  more  territory 261 

The  settlement  of  Canadian  and  Oregonian  boundaries   adds   still 

more 262 

The  fight  to  open  the  territories  to  slavery 263 

The  complex  tangle  of  interests 263 

The  Compromise  of   1850 267 

Secession  openly  preached  at  the  South 268 

XX 

THE  IRREPRESSIBLE  CONFLICT  269-281 

The  growth  at  the  North  of  the  belief  that  slavery  was  wrong  .      .   269 

Uncle  Tom's  Cabin 269 

Kansas-Nebraska;  the  sack  of  Lawrence;   the  assault  on  Sumner; 

the   South   accepts  the  responsibility 270-273 

The  formation  of  the  Republican  Party .275 

Dred  Scott  Case 275 

Lincoln-Douglas  debates  put  the  matter  plainly  and  unmistakably  .   277 

Helper's  Impending  Crisis 279 

The  agitation  for  the  reopening  of  the  slave-trade 280 

John  Brown's  Raid 280 

XXI 

THE  CAUSES  OF  SECESSION  282-296 

The  antiquity  of  the  belief  in  the  Tightness  and  legality  of  secession  282 

Early  schemes  for  two  or  more  confederacies 283 

Fundamental  causes  economic  and  geographical 284 

Immediate  causes  of  the  War 285 

belief  that  the  political  tie  of  the  Federal   government  alone 

stood  in  the  way  of  the  extension  of  slavery 287 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

realization   that    the    South    must    fight   before    the    disparity 
between   North    and   South   became   greater;    the    sections 

compared 288 

the  belief  that  cotton  was  king 292 

the  belief  that  the  Mississippi  would  force  the  western  States 

to  market  their  produce  in  the  South  and  compel  secession  293 
Lincoln's  election  the  signal  not  the  cause  of  secession   ....   296 

XXII 
SECESSION  AND  COMPROMISE  297-307 

The   South   secedes 297 

The  Confederacy  based  upon  slavery 299 

Northern  attempts  at  compromise 299 

The  Southern  leaders  reject  compromise 301 

Why  the  War  did  not  break  out  in  March  1861 303 

The  casus  belli:  the  firing  on  Sumter 304 

The  North  arms 305 

XXIII 
THE  CIVIL  WAR  AS  A  MILITARY  EVENT  308-316 

The  strategical  geography  of  the  Southern  States 308 

Why  Virginia  became  the  chief  field  of  war 309 

Strategical   geography   of   Virginia 309 

The  importance  of  the  Shenandoah  Valley 311 

Strategical  geography  of  the  Mississippi  Valley 312 

The  general  strategy  of  the  War  .  314 

XXIV 

WHY  THE  NORTH  WON  317-339 

The  physical  and  economic  preponderance  of  the  North  .      .      .      .317 

The  failure  of  the  border  States  to  secede 318 

The  rapid  recovery  of  the  North  from  the  commercial   Crisis   of 

1861-2 318 

The  neutrality  of  England  and  France 320 

The  blockade  prevents  the  exportation  of  cotton  and  the  importa 
tion  of  anything  else 322 

Administrative  inefficiency  at  the  South 324 

Financial   mismanagement    at   the    South 329 

Arbitrary  infringement  of  liberty  of  individuals  and  States  .      .      .331 

The  reasons  for  the  length  of  the  War 333 

XXV 

THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR  340-359 

The  achieving  of  nationality 340 

Lincoln  the  father  of  American  nationality 344 

How  the  War  "created"  the  nation 345- 

Geographical  factors  making  for  nationality 347 

The  development  and  enriching  of  the  North 350 

The  collapse  of  the  old  regime  at  the  South 351 

The  artificiality  of  the  slave  power  proved 351 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Lack  of  community  life  at  the  South  revealed 353 

Slavery  seen  to  be  undemocratic  and  abolished 354 

The  extreme  economic  exhaustion  of  the  South 356 

The  effect  of  the  logic  of  "facts"  upon  popular  sentiment  North 

and  South 357 

XXVI 
THE  ISSUE  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  360-368 

Complexity  of  the  problem 360 

Influence  of  actual  conditions 362 

Attitude  of  the  Republican  Party 364 

The  issue  places  a  new  obstacle  in  the  way  of  nationality   .      .      .  365 

Presidential  Reconstruction 366 

XXVII 

CONGRESSIONAL     RECONSTRUCTION:     ITS     CAUSES    AND 
METHODS  369-391 

Objections  to  the  Presidential  solution 369 

Hatred  of  the  executive  and  of  Johnson 370 

Realization  that  the  Southern  States  had  actually  been  out  of 

the  Union 370 

Fear  that  the  South  meant  to  reenslave  the  negro  as  a  punish 
ment  for  crime 371 

Fear  that  the  Southern  and  Northern  Democrats  would  out 
number  the  Republicans  in  Congress  and  undo  the  results 

of  the  War  by  statute 375 

Suspicions  of  the  new  Southern  militia 375 

The  Reconstruction  Acts  and  the  Fourteenth  Amendment    .      .      .   376. 

The  execution  of  the  Acts 379 

The  election  of  1867  and  the  Fifteenth  Amendment 380 

XXVIII 

THE  SOLID  SOUTH  382-391 

Southern  feeling  towards  Congressional  Reconstruction   ....  382 

Character  of  Reconstructed  State  governments 383 

The  South  saved  by  the  creation  of  the  Solid  South 385 

The  practical  disfranchisement  of  the  negro 386 

^Southern  problems  really  at  bottom  economic  and  solved  by  economic 

forces 388 

The  negro  problem 388 

The  emancipation  of  the  poor  white 391 

XXIX 

NATIONAL  PROBLEMS  392-404 

The  fundamental  problems  of  American  development 392 

Their  solution  by  economic  forces 392 

Economic  dependence  on  Europe  was  due  to  the  backwardness 
of  the  country  and  was  obviated  by  its  growth  in  popula 
tion  and  wealth 392 

Divergence  of  interests  resulted  from  the  existence  of  sections 
in  different  phases  of  economic  growth  and  was  solved  by 
the  rapid  growth  of  the  West  and  South 393 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

And  by  the  discovery  of  gold  and  silver 394 

Quarrels  of  States,  of  sections,  and  of  individuals  due  to  racial, 
economic,  and  institutional  differences  have  been  obviated 
by  the  shifting  of  population  and  economic  interdependence  395 

New  national  Problems: 

The  Nationalization  of  industry  and  its  effect  on  institutions 

and  parties 397 

The  effect  of  the   size    of  the   country  upon   the   premises   of 

democracy 398 

The   effect  of  the  inequality  of   property  on   the  premises  of 

democracy 399 

The  worst  fears  of  the  fathers  realized 401 

The  new  conception  of  the  function  of  government  ....  402 

The  new  concept  of  the  State 403 

INDEX  .  407 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 


THE  RISE 
OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 


THE  MEANING  OF  AMERICAN  HISTORY 

WHEN,  in  the  year  1890,  within  our  own  memories,  the  fron 
tier  in  the  United  States  officially  ceased  to  exist,  the  great 
westward  march  of  the  Aryan  race,  begun  thousands  of  years 
ago,  came  to  an  end  and  definitely  closed  the  only  period  of 
the  world's  history  which  man  himself  has  recorded.  The 
tide  of  westward  movement,  which  had  streamed  out  of  the 
East  into  the  West  for  so  many  centuries,  breasted  the  peaks 
of  that  lofty  mountain-range  which  Benton  used  to  call  the 
"shining  mountains,"  and  West  met  East.  The  history  of 
the  United  States  is  the  story  of  the  last  and  geographically 
longest  stage  in  this  westward  progress  of  the  Aryan  race. 
Considering  the  vastness  of  the  area  reclaimed  from  the  wil 
derness  and  the  development  there  of  an  advanced  civiliza 
tion  within  the  brief  space  of  three  centuries,  the  achieve 
ment  is  without  parallel  in  the  records  of  the  race.  Such  is 
the  place  of  the  United  States  in  universal  history. 

A  nation  becomes,  however,  a  great  factor  in  human  de 
velopment  as  much  by  the  splendor  of  its  ideals  as  by  reason 
of  its  actual  achievement.  Homer  placed  the  Elysian  Fields, 
the  abode  of  supreme  happiness,  in  the  West,  the  land  of  the 
setting  sun.  Out  to  those  unknown  regions,  where  Phoebus 
Apollo  stabled  his  steeds  at  evening,  went  Odysseus  to  talk 
with  his  father's  spirit;  out  into  the  West  Virgil  led  JEneas 
to  see  the  dead  heroes,  riding  and  leaping  in  the  green 

Q 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 


meadows  under  perpetual  sunshine.  The  grim  sagas  of  the 
Norsemen  tell  us  how  the  dead  chieftain  was  laid  upon  a 
couch  on  board  his  long  ship ;  how  the  great  sail  was  hoisted 
and  how  the  raven  standard  flapped  sinister  wings  against 
the  mast;  how  the  flaring  torches  flung  a  beam  of  light  to 
guide  the  ship  on  its  last  long  journey  out  into  the  West 
across  the  great  water  to  that  shore  where  Odin  waited  to 
welcome  his  chosen  warrior  to  the  halls  of  Valhalla.  Some 
prophetic  impulse  led  the  bards  to  make  the  West  symbolic 
of  the  hopes  and  ideals  of  the  Aryan  race.  There,  the 
dreamer  of  dreams  has  built  his  castle;  there,  the  seer  of 
visions  has  beheld  great  empires,  boundless  wealth,  inconceiv 
able  happiness.  The  dull  eyes  of  struggling  European  peas 
ants  have  for  three  centuries  seen  in  the  United  States  the 
Elysian  Fields.  The  search  for  them  in  the  West  had  been 
unremitting;  only  from  America  came  back  word  that  Elys 
ium  had  been  found,  a  land  truly  flowing  with  milk  and 
honey.  America  has  been  the  hope  of  the  despairing,  the 
refuge  of  the  pursued ;  here  the  homeless  have  found  shelter ; 
the  hungry,  food;  the  sick  at  heart,  courage;  and  the  op 
pressed,  liberty.  No  one  who  has  asked  in  faith  has  been 
turned  empty  away.  The  United  States  holds  the  unique  and 
superb  position  of  embodying  for  millions  of  men  and  women 
the  racial  vision  of  an  abode  of  the  Blessed  in  the  West.  Such 
is  her  place  in  the  history  of  Western  Europe. 

But  for  this  deep  and  abiding  racial  belief  in  the  location  of 
the  Elysian  Fields,  the  present  United  States  would  not 
exist.  The  first  explorers  would  never  have  agreed  that  their 
hopes  could  find  realization  in  the  cotton  fields  and  rice 
swamps  of  the  South,  in  the  wheat  fields  of  Dakota  and  in 
the  cod  fisheries  of  New  England.  The  incentive  for  the 
toil  and  suffering  indispensable  to  the  discovery  and  ex 
ploration  of  this  continent  came  rather  from  the  expecta 
tion,  firm  in  the  minds  of  Spaniard  and  Englishman,  that  he 
would  next  day  see  gleaming  upon  the  distant  horizon  the 
silver  walls  of  the  Seven  Cities  of  Cibola,  or  the  deep  red 
glow  of  the  enormous  carbuncle  that  lighted  the  broad  halls 


THE  MEANING  OF  AMERICAN  HISTORY  5 

of  the  wondrous  palace  of  Prester  John.  The  expectations 
of  standing  upon  the  shores  of  the  sea  that  washed  the  is 
land  of  Cipango,  where  the  streets  were  paved  with  sheets  of 
solid  gold,  lured  Champlain  up  the  St.  Lawrence  and  brought 
La  Salle  into  the  Mississippi  Valley.  The  search  for  the 
fabulous  wealth  and  mythological  personages  did  not  cease 
until  the  eighteenth  century.  The  dreams  and  visions  of 
men,  the  persistent  search  for  a  will-o'-the-wisp  can  alone 
explain  much  of  the  exploration  and  development  of  the 
United  States.  Only  the  dissatisfaction  of  men  with  what 
they  found,  their  abiding  faith  in  something  better  further 
west  could  have  colonized  a  great  continent  in  three  centuries. 
This  splendid  westward  progress  which  gives  us  our  place 
in  the  history  of  the  Aryan  race,  the  ideal  of  liberty  and 
freedom  which  has  created  for  us  a  unique  place  in  the 
history  of  Western  Europe,  are  not  the  chief  facts  in  Ameri 
can  history.  The  history  of  the  United  States  is  in  the 
truest  sense  the  story  of  the  assemblage  of  the  crude  ma 
terials  for  a  great  people  and  of  the  development  in  them  of 
a  national  consciousness.  We  shall  entirely  miss  the  most 
vital  fact  about  this  story  if  we  allow  ourselves  to  as 
sume  even  for  an  instant  that  anything  deserving  the  name 
of  nation  existed  in  North  America  in  1660,  in  1760,  in  1789, 
or  even  in  1861.  American  history  does  not  describe  the  life 
story  of  a  nation,  nor  even  the  development  or  growth  of  a 
nation,  but  the  very  birth  of  the  nation,  which,  as  such,  is 
still  in  its  infancy.  The  fortuitous  collection  of  many  in 
dividuals  upon  the  same  sea-coast  does  not  of  itself  create  a 
nation,  nor  do  these  people  become  a  nation  when  they  first 
grudgingly  permit  a  common  government  to  perform  certain 
limited  functions  which  none  of  them  could  individually  per 
form  at  all.  A  nation  is  not  made  by  the  adoption  of  con 
stitutions  nor  by  obedience  to  law;  its  existence  is  not  mani 
fested  by  conventions  nor  legislatures;  for  it  is  a  spiritual 
bond  between  the  people  of  a  community  and  does  not  exist 
simply  in  the  physical,  geographical,  economic,  or  con 
stitutional  factors  necessary  to  its  existence  and  expression. 


e  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

A  nation  exists  only  in  the  spiritual  consciousness  of  a  great 
people  and  consists  literally  of  the  ideals,  aspirations,  hopes, 
and  fears  which  they  have  in  common.  Nor  is  this  nation 
made  with  hands.  Its  constituent  parts  think  the  same,  not 
because  they  vote  to  agree,  but  because  they  do  agree  in  very 
fact.  They  possess  the  same  aspirations  and  ideals,  are  loyal 
and  patriotic  to  their  common  government,  not  from  policy 
or  from  desire,  but  because  such  psychological  factors  are 
realities.  Until  this  spiritual  bond  exists,  until  the  people 
become  conscious  of  its  actuality,  no  sentient,  conscious 
national  existence  can  be  predicated.  No  amount  of  fervent 
wishing  by  individuals  that  it  might  be,  no  eager  attempts 
to  make  it  so,  can  be  accepted  as  proof  of  its  existence.  A 
nation  either  is  or  is  not.  It  cannot  be  *  'created' ';  it  must 
grow  into  being.  Certainly,  the  very  least  we  can  demand 
as  proof  of  its  existence,  is  the  expressed  conviction  of  all 
classes  of  the  people  in  all  parts  of  the  country  that  a  na 
tional  tie  is  desirable  and  possible.  So  long  as  men  could 
fiercely  debate,  as  Washington  phrased  it,  "whether  we  are 
one  nation  or  thirteen/7  so  long  as  one  great  section  of  the 
community  could  maintain  with  threats  and  at  last  with  arms 
its  complete  independence  of  and  difference  from  the  rest 
of  the  people,  no  true  national  bond  could  exist. 

But  no  one  who  reflects  can  be  surprised  that  nationality 
is  as  yet  young  in  this  country.  We  have  scarcely  possessed 
for  decades  the  outward  physical  and  political  expressions  of 
nationality  which  most  European  countries  have  had  for 
centuries: — territorial  unity;  continuous  settlement  through 
out  the  whole  area;  something  approaching  stability  of  popu 
lation; — which  can  alone  make  possible  the  actual  experi 
ence  in  living  together  from  which  community  of  sentiment 
must  come.  For  two  centuries  and  more,  the  American  peo 
ple  has  been  struggling  into  physical  existence  and  has  needed 
all  the  energy  of  its  members  to  cope  with  the  essentials  of 
individual  and  community  life.  Nationally,  we  have  been 
undeveloped  rather  than  wrongly  developed ;  we  have  lacked 
national  consciousness  from  the  same  inevitable  reasons  that 


THE  MEANING  OF  AMERICAN  HISTORY  7 

prevent  the  man  from  preceding  the  child.  In  Burke 's 
expressive  phrase,  we  were  "a  people  still,  as  it  were,  in  the 
gristle,  and  not  yet  hardened  into  the  bone."  We  had  to 
become  a  nation  by  feeling,  thinking,  living,  and  by  develop 
ing  through  the  experience  of  decade  after  decade  that  unity 
of  ideals  and  aims  whose  expression'  is  patriotism.  As  a 
nation,  we  have  yet  to  share  each  other's  crusts,  drink  to  the 
dregs  the  cup  of  national  humiliation,  be  welded  one  to 
another  by  the  devastation  of  sword  and  fire,  by  those  hor 
rible  catastrophes  that  make  nations  old  in  experience  be 
fore  their  time.  As  yet  we  have  suffered  as  parts,  never  as 
an  entity;  we  have  not  yet  rejoiced  as  a  people  with  such 
a  delirious,  spontaneous  outburst  as  thrilled  England  after 
the  defeat  of  the  Armada  or  Germany  after  the  victory  at 
Sedan. 

Ours  has  been  a  growth,  unspoiled  and  lovely,  the  natural, 
normal  growth  of  the  child,  protected  from  luxury  in  its 
adolescence,  furnished  with  every  necessity  as  manhood  ap 
proached  ;  lacking  experience,  not  knowing  how  or  when  to 
utilize  his  resources,  but  sane,  strong,  courageous,  indomi 
table.  There  is  something  of  an  epic  splendor  about  this 
growth  to  rugged  physical  manhood  of  a  great  people.  Like 
Antaeus,  we  drew  our  strength  from  the  ground.  We  built 
our  house  with  our  bare  hands  and  fashioned  our  national 
physical  body  in  an  incredibly  short  time  out  in  a  cleansing 
wilderness  far  from  the  sins  and  lusts  of  the  race  and  out  of 
materials  unstained  by  the  drums  and  tramplings  of  Euro 
pean  conquest.  Thus  were  we  purged  of  the  dross  and  freed 
from  the  subtle  temptations  of  the  old  world.  Our  sins  were 
the  animal  cravings  of  the  boy  for  too  much  food,  too  many 
clothes, — the  revel  of  the  child  in  the  riotous  pleasures  of 
the  race,  from  curiosity  rather  than  from  wickedness. 

The  events  of  American  history  are  more  obviously  con 
cerned  with  the  relationship  of  entities  than  with  their  at 
tempts  to  unite  into  a  whole.  Perforce  we  study  Massachu 
setts  and  Virginia,  the  ideas  of  the  North  and  the  views  of  the 
South,  not  as  parts  in  relation  to  the  whole,  but  as  separate 


8  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

entities  whose  relation  to  each  other  has  yet  to  be  defined. 
The  debates  in  Congress  were  occupied  with  the  interests  of 
sections  of  the  country,  not  as  parts  of  a  whole  but  as  antag 
onistic  entities  whose  common  interest  and  bond  must  be  dis 
covered  and  could  never  be  assumed  to  exist.  Indeed,  it  is 
impossible,  as  Webster  and  Lincoln  pointed  out,  to  reconcile 
the  ideas  of  States'  sovereignty  and  of  Nullification  with  any 
other  conception  of  a  central  government  than  that  of  a 
fortuitous,  anomalous,  and  technical  bond  of  dubious  value.1 
The  theory  of  States'  rights  meant  nothing  if  it  did  not  assert 
the  superiority  of  the  interests  of  a  single  State  over  those 
of  the  aggregation  of  States ;  Nullification  was  an  empty  form 
unless  it  meant  that  each  State  possessed  vital  interests  so 
widely  divergent  from  those  of  other  States  that  its  very  ex 
istence  would  be  at  stake  if  it  was  to  admit  the  right  of  the 
central  government  to  adopt  and  enforce  any  policy  which  a 
majority  of  the  other  States  might  deem  expedient.  Both 
States'  rights  and  Nullification  premised  the  absence  of  that 
normal  community  of  interests,  of  that  essential  uniformity 
of  thought  and  ideals,  upon  which  alone  one  nation  in  the 
proper  sense  of  the  word  could  be  based.  They  denied  the 
existence  of  a  whole  of  which  they  were  severally  parts ;  they 
solemnly  affirmed  the  existence  of  a  formal  relationship  be 
tween  entities  absolutely  complete  within  themselves.  Seces 
sion  stated  in  actual  words  the  contention  of  a  great  section 
of  the  country  that  two  nations  really  existed  within  the 
bond  of  the  Federal  Government  and  that  the  formal  recog- 

i  "The  tendency  of  all  these  ideas  and  sentiments  is  obviously  to 
bring  the  Union  into  discussion,  as  a  mere  question  of  present  and 
temporary  expediency;  nothing  more  than  a  mere  matter  of  profit  and 
loss.  The  Union  is  to  be  preserved,  while  it  suits  local  and  temporary 
purposes  to  preserve  it;  and  to  be  sundered  whenever  it  shall  be  found 
to  thwart  such  purposes.  Union,  of  itself,  is  considered  by  the  dis 
ciples  of  this  school  as  hardly  a  good.  .  .  .  They  cherish  no  deep  and 
fixed  regard  for  it,  flowing  from  a  thorough  conviction  of  its  absolute 
and  vital  necessity  to  our  welfare."  Webster,  first  reply  to  Hayne, 
Jan.  20,  1830.  Works,  III,  258-9.  "Again,  if  the  United  States  be  not 
a  government  proper,  but  an  association  of  States  in  the  nature  of  con 
tract  merely  .  .  ."  Lincoln,  First  Inaugural  Address,  Nicolay  and 
Hay,  Abraham  Lincoln,  Complete  Works,  VI,  174. 


THE  MEANING  OF  AMERICAN  HISTORY  9 

nition  of  this  obvious  political  and  constitutional  fact  was  so 
vital  to  the  well-being  of  the  South  that  those  States  were  pre 
pared  to  demand  its  acceptance  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet. 
The  doctrine  of  the  constitutionality  of  secession  affirmed  that 
the  separation  would  be  legal  according  to  the  Constitution  be 
cause  there  had  always  been  entities  in  America,  not  an  or 
ganic  whole.  The  Civil  War  was  not  a  fight  for  the  preserva 
tion  of  the  Constitution  or  of  a  technical  political  bond  called 
the  Union,  but  a  war  to  remove  the  last  and  greatest  obstacle 
in  the  way  of  the  formation  of  an  American  nation — the  be 
lief  of  nearly  one-half  the  country  that  a  single  nation  not 
only  did  not  exist  but  was  neither  possible  nor  desirable. 
The  great  number  of  Southern  men  who  accepted  the  action 
of  their  State  as  superior  in  obligation  even  to  their  own  per 
sonal  conclusions  that  the  war  was  wrong,  proves  absolutely 
the  lack  of  a  distinctly  national  consciousness  in  1861. 

The  result  of  the  Civil  War  was,  therefore,  something  in 
finitely  grander  than  the  preservation  of  a  constitutional 
form  known  as  the  Union.  The  North  was  inspired  by  the 
vision  of  "a  noble  and  puissant  nation,  rousing  herself  like  a 
strong  man  after  sleep  and  shaking  her  invincible  locks,  as  an 
eagle  mewing  her  mighty  youth  and  kindling  her  undazzled 
eyes  at  the  full  mid-day  beam";  the  vision  of  a  nation  one 
and  inseparable,  in  which  the  rights  of  the  whole  should 
never  be  sacrificed  to  an  individual  or  to  any  body  of  indi 
viduals.  Just  as  the  greatness  of  Webster  consisted  in  the 
fact  that  he  made  the  North  see  this  vision,  so  the  greatness 
of  Lincoln's  achievement  lay  in  the  fact  that  he  made  North 
and  South  alike  realize  that  the  aim  of  the  war  was  not  so 
much  the  abolition  of  slavery  or  the  denial  of  States'  rights2 

2"!  have,  therefore,  in  every  case  thought  it  proper  to  keep  the  in 
tegrity  of  the  Union  prominent  as  the  primary  object  of  the  contest 
on  our  part.  .  .  .  The  Union  must  be  preserved."  Lincoln,  Message  to 
Congress,  Dec.  3,  1861.  See  also  the  First  Inaugural  Address,  the  first 
paragraphs.  "My  paramount  object  in  this  struggle  is  to  save  the 
Union,  and  is  not  either  to  save  or  to  destroy  slavery."  Lincoln's  letter 
to  Horace  Greeley,  August  22,  1862.  Nicolay  and  Hay,  Complete  Works, 
VIII,  16.  See  also  Grant's  correspondence  for  1861  in  Letters  of  U.  8, 
Grant,  edited  by  J.  G.  Cramer.  (1913.) 


10  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

as  the  creation  of  a  mighty  nation,  powerful  in  her  grasp  of 
a  continent  and  two  oceans,  rich  in  the  fruits  of  united  en 
deavor,  invincible  by  reason  of  her  consciousness  of  a  noble 
and  splendid  ideal.  The  superiority  of  the  whole  over  the 
parts,  the  splendor  of  the  aspirations  born  of  designs  based 
upon  the  unity  of  the  people,  were  the  decisive  factors  in_ 
favor  of  the  North.  The  War  made  Southerners  and  North 
erners  Americans.  The  essence  of  American  history  then  is 
this  achieving  of  nationality  by  a  great  people.  Than  this 
no  subject  could  be  greater  or  more  fascinating  to  the  student. 
It  is  the  only  instance  in  all  human  history  where  we  can 
watch  the  consciousness  of  nationality  actually  dawning  in 
the  individual  mind. 


II 

SPANISH  AND  FRENCH  FAILURES 

WE  owe  the  first  knowledge  of  this  continent  to  Norse  rovers, 
to  Breton  or  Portuguese  fishermen,  who  told  of  its  fish  and 
grapes,  but  never  deemed  its  existence  of  greater  moment. 
We  owe  its  real  discovery  to  the  mistaken  geographical  no 
tions  of  the  earth's  size  and  form,  prevalent  in  Western  Eu 
rope  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  which  filled  a  tall, 
ruddy-haired  Genoese  sailor  with  visions  of  incalculable 
wealth  and  of  the  salvation  of  souls  unborn,  and  led  him  to 
embark  a  crew  of  adventurers  and  criminals  in  three  small, 
leaky  vessels  for  a  voyage  to  find  a  sea  route  to  India  and 
China  by  sailing  west.  We  owe  the  name  America  to  an  ad 
venturer,  contractor,  and  sailor,  who  wrote  the  first  account 
of  the  Mundus  Novus  which  attained  much  circulation  or 
notoriety.  Nevertheless,  neither  the  date  of  the  discovery, 
the  person  of  the  discoverer,  nor  the  nation  he  represented 
exercised  then  or  since  any  appreciable  influence  on  the  his 
tory  of  the  United  States.  When  the  English  settlers  landed 
at  Jamestown  in  1607,  the  Spanish  had  long  relinquished  the 
exploration  and  settlement  of  the  northern  Continent  and 
had  left  within  the  limits  of  the  present  United  States  only 
a  handful  of  soldiers  and  settlers  in  Florida  and  New  Mexico 
whose  continued  existence  was  made  precarious  by  pestilence, 
famine,  and  hostile  Indians.  A  century  of  Spanish  effort 
hardly  provided  the  English  who  followed  them  with  the 
knowledge  that  land  of  continental  dimensions  existed  here. 

Yet  if  Spanish  discoverers  and  explorers  contributed  noth 
ing  of  value  to  the  history  of  the  United  States,  it  was  not 
for  lack  of  diligence  nor  of  prodigious  effort.  They  sought 
Cipango  with  the  greatest  tenacity  among  the  islands  in  the 

11 


12  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Caribbean,  hunted  the  South  and  Central  American  coasts 
with  assiduity,  and  even  attempted  wild  guesses  at  the  rela 
tion  the  scattered  islands  and  bits  of  continent  bore  to  the 
maps  of  Asia  already  published  by  travelers  and  geographers. 
It  was  plain  to  most  that  the  great  land  south  of  Cuba  was  a 
part  of  Asia.  Then  came  Balboa.  He  pushed  across  the 
Isthmus  of  Panama  and  found  the  sea  on  the  western  side 
(1513).  Was  the  Mundus  Novus  then  in  the  South  and 
was  it  Asia  itself  that  lay  to  the  North?  Magellan  in  his 
long  voyage  around  the  Horn  and  across  the  Pacific  (1519-21) 
demonstrated  that  South  America  was  not  connected  with 
Asia  and  for  the  first  time  gave  Europeans  some  notion  of 
the  magnitude  of  the  Pacific  Ocean,  and  of  the  true  size  of 
the  globe. 

Then  came  to  the  shores  of  the  northern  continent  strong 
expeditions,  with  infantry  and  cavalry,  generals  and  priests, 
seeking  everywhere  the  great  countries  of  Asia  which  Marco 
Polo  had  seen  and  described.  One  skirted  the  northern  coast 
of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  saw  the  mouth  of  a  great  river; 
others  sailed  along  the  Atlantic  coast  and  made  at  least  one 
attempt  to  settle  on  the  James  River;  two  traversed  the  con 
tinent  from  Florida  west  to  the  Pacific.  Coronado  pushed 
north  from  Mexico  through  the  Zuni  pueblos  to  the  plains  of 
western  Kansas  and  probably  returned  through  Texas.  De 
Soto,  in  the  east,  marched  northward  from  the  Gulf  into 
Tennessee,  and  his  men,  burying  him,  a  victim  to  the  climate, 
returned  along  the  Mississippi.  The  Spaniards  had  explored 
the  continent  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  and  from  the 
Gulf  as  far  north  as  the  latitude  of  Virginia  and  Missouri 
and  yet  do  not  seem  to  have  measured  distances  or  plotted 
maps  to  scale  or  to  have  realized  that  a  river  as  large  as  the 
Mississippi  must  drain  a  land  of  continental  dimensions. 
"Whatever  they  knew,  they  kept  carefully  to  themselves  and 
in  1600  the  cartographers'  knowledge  of  the  interior  was  still 
of  the  vaguest. 

The  reasons  for  this  failure  of  the  Spanish  to  colonize 
are  not  far  to  seek.  The  Spaniards  came  not  to  found  homes 


SPANISH  AND  FRENCH  FAILURES  13 

as  the  English  did,  but  to  hunt  for  gold,  for  the  mysterious 
fountain  of  eternal  youth,  for  the  land  where  the  Grand 
Khan,  Prester  John,  Gog  and  Magog,  and  the  mythical  per- 
sonages  described  by  Sir  John  Mandeville  and  other  imagi 
native  medieval  travelers  dwelt  in  surpassing  luxury  and  mag 
nificence.  They  had  read  that  there  were  rivers  of  diamonds, 
trees  on  which  grew  pearls  and  rubies,  and  a  huge  palace 
lighted  by  a  single  glorious  carbuncle.  The  simple  tale  of 
Fray  Marcos  about  his  trip  to  the  pueblos  in  Arizona  was 
elaborated  by  breathless  auditors  into  statements,  greedily 
accepted,  that  he  had  seen  a  city  as  large  as  two  Sevilles, 
where  all  the  women  wore  great  strings  of  golden  beads, 
where  all  the  men  were  silversmiths,  and  where  the  very 
lintels  of  the  doors  were  studded  with  emeralds  and  rubies. 
Such  cities  the  Spaniards  had  expected  to  find ;  for  such  ex 
peditions  money  and  men  were  forthcoming.  Their  disap 
pointment  was  great,  for  they  found  some  adobe  pueblos,  into 
whose  door-jambs  had  been  pressed  with  a  no  more  skilful 
instrument  than  the  Indian's  thumb,  rough  uncut  topazes 
and  garnets.  The  inhabitants  were  darkskinned  men  and 
women  clad  in  dirty  woolen  blankets  and  wearing  a  few 
bracelets  and  anklets  of  rough-beaten  gold  and  red  copper. 
To  the  north,  Coronado  found  only  huge  herds  of  "hump 
backed  cows";  to  the  east,  other  explorers  found  the  arid 
plains  of  Texas,  and  the  swamps  of  Louisiana  and  Florida. 
They  stood  in  the  treasure  house  of  the  new  world,  in  the 
Elysian  Fields  the  race  had  so  long  sought,  in  the  abode  of 
wealth,  liberty,  and  hope;  and  they  knew  it  not.  They 
sought  the  wealth  of  Inde  and  of  the  Grand  Khan  of  China ; 
they  were  ready  with  Benedict  to  "fetch  you  a  toothpicker 
from  the  farthest  inch  of  Asia;  bring  you  the  length  of 
Prester  John's  foot;  fetch  you  a  hair  off  the  Great  Chan's 
beard;  do  you  any  embassy  to  the  Pigmies";  but  they  were 
not  ready  to  work.  They  turned  to  Mexico  and  Peru  where 
the  gold,  silver,  and  precious  stones  they  had  come  for  were 
to  be  found. 
At  the  same  time,  the  failure  to  colonize  was  not  due  merely 


14  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

to  the  aims  of  the  men  who  came.  The  cutthroats  and  down- 
at-the-heel  gentlemen  of  Europe,  looking  for  sudden  riches, 
were  indeed  far  from  good  material  for  settlers,  but  they 
came  to  spots  unsuitable  for  permanent  colonies  and  they 
came  utterly  without  preparation  for  settlement  and  indeed 
without  even  the  faintest  notion  of  what  the  mainland  was 
like.  The  swamps  and  lowlands  of  the  Gulf  States,  the  hot 
fields  of  Texas  are  not  favorable  spots  for  white  men  to  live 
in,  and  the  population  there  is  still  sparse.  Unfitted  for 
permanent  residence,  the  voyagers  were  not  able  to  maintain 
themselves  for  any  considerable  time.  A  Spaniard  clothed 
in  leather  jerkin,  heavy  cuirass,  helmet,  leather  boots  to  his 
knees,  and  an  arquebus  weighing  twenty  pounds  was  not 
ready  for  a  march  through  a  Florida  swamp  on  a  torrid 
summer's  day.  The  horses  sank  to  their  knees  in  the  ooze 
and  were  burdens  rather  than  aids  to  progress ;  the  insectivora 
swarmed;  yellow  fever,  malaria,  and  dysentery  carried  off 
the  unfortunate  explorers  at  a  rapid  rate.  Narvaez  and  his 
men,  driven  mad  by  disease,  hunger,  and  the  swamp  pests, 
finally  killed  their  horses,  made  boats  out  of  the  skins,  em 
barked  on  the  Gulf  and  perished  miserably  trying  to  reach 
Mexico. 

In  addition,  tHe  Spanish  landed  one  and  all  among  fierce 
and  well-organized  Indian  tribes.  The  Zuni  and  Moqui 
pueblo  confederacies  in  Arizona  and  New  Mexico  and  the 
Creeks  and  Cherokees  on  the  Gulf  coast,  though  less  ad 
vanced  than  the  Aztecs  and  Peruvians,  were  yet  the  strong 
est  bands  on  the  Northern  continent  and  extended  their  in 
fluence  to  the  north  until  it  met  that  of  the  Iroquois  in 
Pennsylvania  and  Illinois.  None  of  them  were  civilized  in 
any  degree  as  we  use  the  word.  They  were,  in  fact,  in  middle 
barbarism,  two  ethnical  periods,  of  some  thousands  of  years 
apiece,  behind  the  European  explorers  in  development.  Not 
having  attained  the  knowledge  of  smelting  iron  or  the  use 
of  the  alphabet,  their  warfare,  agriculture,  architecture,  and 
domestic  life  were  those  of  people  who,  for  lack  of  hard  im 
plements,  must  be  content  with  axes  whose  edges  turned,  with 


SPANISH  AND  FRENCH  FAILURES  16 

plows  and  hoes  of  use  only  for  scratching  the  surface,  and 
with  houses  built  of  mud  and  wattle  or  of  soft  limestone. 
Their  social  organization  too  was  most  primitive :  they  traced 
property  and  descent  through  the  mother  instead  of  through 
the  father,  had  no  private  ownership  of  property,  no  domestic 
animals  save  the  dog.  They  were  utterly  unfit  to  cope  per 
manently  with  the  white  men,  with  whom  they  could  not 
amalgamate  and  whom  they  could  not  in  the  long  run  suc 
cessfully  oppose ;  but  they  were  stalwart,  entirely  void  of  phys 
ical  fear  and  sufficiently  well-organized  to  give  the  Spaniards 
infinite  trouble  in  this  first  encounter. 

Nevertheless,  with  ordinary  prudence  -and  moderation  the 
Spaniards  might  have  fared  well.  They  considered  the  In 
dians,  however,  to  be  heretics  fit  only  for  slaves.  Coronado's 
men  snatched  the  blankets  from  the  very  backs  of  squaws  and 
even  of  chiefs;  De  Soto  outraged  Indian  notions  of  dignity 
by  compelling  chiefs  to  carry  burdens.  One  and  all  the  Span 
iards  scoffed  at  the  Indians '  worship  and  to  all  this  they  added 
treachery  and  cruelty.  From  greed,  violence,  and  slave-catch 
ing  could  come  only  one  result.  The  Spaniards  were  attacked 
and  ambushed,  their  water  and  food  destroyed,  their  horses 
killed,  their  guns  stolen.  The  Indians,  who  had  been  ready  to 
find  among  the  first  Spaniards  the  white  Messiah  their  legends 
told  about,  came  to  detest  them  with  a  deep  and  strenuous 
hatred.  Moreover,  coupled  to  the  selfishness,  greed,  and  in 
subordination  of  the  rank  and  file  were  the  rivalry,  jealousy, 
and  treachery  of  the  leaders.  Indeed,  the  existence  of  such 
factors  makes  the  failure  of  the  Spaniards  to  influence  the 
history  of  the  United  States  seem  not  surprising,  but  inevit 
able. 

Nor  was  Spain  the  strong  united  nation  needed  to  mother  a 
sturdy  race  of  colonists  and  protect  their  infancy.  Her  unity 
was  seeming  rather  than  real;  her  loyalty  to  the  king  ques 
tionable  ;  the  prevailing  idea  of  her  prosperity  based  upon  the 
economic  fallacy  that  the  silver  she  began  to  get  from  Peru 
in  such  enormous  sums  was  real  wealth.  Prom  the  dynastic 
visions  of  Charles  V  and  Philip  II  came  weakness,  not 


16  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

strength.  Throughout  the  century  she  was  occupied  either 
with  war  with  France,  or  with  subduing  revolts  in  Germany, 
in  the  Netherlands,  or  in  Spain  itself.  Her  rulers  had,  in 
fact,  neither  energy,  money,  nor  men  to  devote  to  the  creation 
and  development  of  a  new  Spain  in  the  temperate  regions  of 
North  America. 

The  exploits  of  the  French  Huguenots  in  Florida  and  South 
Carolina  and  the  work  of  French  fur-traders  and  fishermen 
in  the  St.  Lawrence  region  had  also  led  by  1607  to  no  results 
of  permanence.  The  same  causes  which  made  the  Spanish 
settlement  difficult,  plus  the  enmity  of  the  Spaniards  them 
selves,  effectually  crushed  all  the  enterprises  in  the  South, 
while  the  inclement  winters  of  the  North,  and  the  difficulty 
of  raising  food  in  the  brief  summers  caused  the  fur-traders 
and  fishermen  to  erect  only  factories  which  they  visited  yearly. 
Along  the  Great  Lakes,  too,  the  French  met  the  fierce  and 
well-organized  Iroquois,  who  effectually  prevented  them  from 
playing  a  significant  part  in  the  history  of  the  United  States. 
The  existence  of  the  French  colonies  in  the  eighteenth  century 
rather  than  the  dramatic  exploits  of  explorers  in  the  seven 
teenth  is  of  importance  in  our  national  development. 

Thus  it  fell  out  that  when  the  English  queen  issued  a  pat 
ent  of  colonization  in  1578  to  Raleigh  and  Gilbert,  her  notions 
of  what  she  was  granting  were  of  the  vaguest.  Fairly  ac 
curate  maps  had  been  made  and  published  showing  the  conti 
nent  and  its  main  features  of  coast-line ;  but  side  by  side  with 
these  there  flourished  many  maps  representing  all  sorts  of 
conceptions  of  the  new  land,  and  the  men  of  the  time  had 
not  yet  proved  to  their  own  satisfaction  which  of  these  ideas 
was  right.  "Without  actual  experience,  no  one  could  tell  be 
yond  a  doubt  which  was  valuable  and  which  was  worthless. 
The  English  appear  to  have  believed  that  the  Atlantic  coast 
was  in  places  only  a  couple  of  hundred  miles  wide,  and  that 
on  the  other  side  of  this  narrow  strip  was  the  China  Sea 
and  the  cities  Marco  Polo  had  described.  So  naive  too  were 
their  conceptions  of  natural  forces  that  the  first  Virginia 
settlers  were  ordered  by  the  English  capitalists,  who  financed 


SPANISH  AND  FRENCH  FAILURES  17 

the  expedition,  to  sail  up  the  rivers  till  they  came  to  the  spot 
where  in  a  storm  the  waters  of  the  China  Sea  washed  over 
into  the  head  waters  of  the  James  and  the  Potomac.  Even 
after  it  became  known  that  land  and  not  water  lay  to  the  west, 
the  expectations  lingered  of  finding  marvelous  cities  and, 
at  the  very  least,  a  water-way  to  China.  Champlain  thought 
the  La  Chine  rapids  were  all  that  blocked  his  path ;  La  Salle 
fully  expected  to  sail  down  the  Ohio  into  the  Pacific,  and, 
after  being  disappointed  in  this,  long  believed  that  the  Mis 
sissippi  led  thither;  in  fact,  as  late  as  the  Revolution,  the 
Rev.  James  Maury,  made  famous  by  the  Parson's  Cause,  pre 
dicted  a  glorious  commercial  future  for  Virginia  because  of 
the  water-way  through  the  Potomac,  Ohio,  and  Missouri  Rivers 
to  the  Pacific  and  the  Chinese  trade.  Magellan  had  demon 
strated  the  fact  that  a  new  world  existed,  but  it  remained  for 
the  French  and  English  gradually  to  "discover"  the  confines 
of  the  present  United  States  by  living  in  it  for  nearly  three 
centuries. 

No  proper  conception  of  the  area  and  configuration  of  the 
continent  was  definitely  attained  and  spread  generally 
through  the  community  until  the  days  of  Jefferson  when 
Lewis  and  Clark  returned  from  their  long  journey  to  the 
Pacific  coast.  The  effective  discovery  of  the  present  United 
States  was,  then,  a  long  and  difficult  process,  which  was  so 
far  from  begun  when  the  first  English  colonists  came  here 
that  the  name  Virginia,  applied  by  the  English  at  that  time 
to  the  whole  Atlantic  coast,  was  still  one  to  conjure  up  to  the 
excited  imaginations  of  adventurous  men  all  sorts  of  won 
drous  possibilities.  This  ignorance  of  actual  conditions  and 
the  resultant  color  it  lent  to  glorious  legends  and  fables  was 
probably  no  less  important  a  factor  in  producing  English 
emigration  than  had  been  Columbus 's  misconceptions  of  geog 
raphy  in  causing  the  discovery  of  the  Western  Hemisphere. 
Had  either  known  precisely  what  they  would  find  here,  had 
either  dreamt  of  what  they  would  suffer  here,  neither  would 
have  come  at  all. 


Ill 

THE  ENGLISH  GENESIS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

OF  the  many  events  that  happened  on  this  continent  only 
those  are  a  part  of  the  history  of  the  United  States  which 
vitally  influenced  the  fortunes  of  the  people  who  ratified 
the  Constitution  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
who  have  since,  by  the  friction  and  strife  of  a  century's 
earnest  endeavor,  at  last  welded  themselves  into  a  nation, 
possessed  of  unity  of  language,  laws,  and  ideals,  and  whose 
advanced  corporate  consciousness  entitles  it  to  the  respect 
and  admiration  of  the  world.  During  the  colonial  period 
the  elements  of  this  nation  were  brought  into  a  wilderness; 
the  Revolution  separated  those  elements  from  England  and 
left  them  to  forge  themselves  into  a  nation  without  Euro 
pean  interference;  the  history  of  the  country  since  1789  is 
the  story  of  fusing  and  welding  discordant  political  and 
economic  interests  into  unity.  The  Civil  War  completed  the 
nation  whose  first  elements  came  hither  in  the  Susan  Con 
stant  and  the  Mayflower.  The  genesis  of  the  United  States 
consists,  then,  of  those  things  which  made  it  possible  for 
Englishmen  to  come  to  America;  of  those  things  which  made 
them  willing  or  anxious  to  come;  and  of  those  things  which 
made  it  possible  for  them  to  stay. 

The  present  United  States  was  made  possible  by  the  victory 
of  the  English  fleet  over  the  Spanish  Armada  at  Gravelines 
in  July  1588.  The  victory  was  itself  the  product  of  the 
genius  of  the  English  race  for  naval  architecture  and  the 
legitimate  result  of  the  development  of  a  new  type  of  fighting 
ship  that  could  sail  as  well  as  fight.  The  Channel  pirates 
and  the  daring  voyages  of  Hawkins  and  Drake  to  the  Spanish 
Main  gave  the  men  of  the  English  South  Coast  a  knowledge 

18 


THE  ENGLISH  GENESIS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES          19 

of  seamanship,  a  reckless  courage,  and  a  contempt  for  Span 
iards.  But  after  all  the  fact  that  the  English  won  by  sheer 
efficiency  and  bravery  was  of  less  consequence  in  the  history 
of  the  United  States  than  the  fact  of  the  victory  itself.  The 
Spanish  fleet  was  vanquished — England  became  mistress  of 
the  seas — and  the  new  land  to  the  west  lay  open  to  English 
enterprise.  That  one  day's  valiant  work,  far  more  than  the 
voyages  of  Cabot,  the  reiterated  claims  of  Mary  and  Elizabeth, 
and  the  patents  of  James,  gave  the  English  a  right  to  the 
soil  of  the  New  World.  The  control  of  the  ocean  highway 
to  America  was  the  indispensable  prerequisite  of  posses 
sion. 

A  great  outburst  of  energy  in  the  last  years  of  the  sixteenth 
century  and  the  first  of  the  seventeenth  betokened  the  loosing 
of  the  pent-up  strength  stored  away  in  England  by  the  domes 
tic  peace  and  economic  growth  of  the  preceding  century. 
Population  and  wealth  had  increased  enormously.  The  fet 
ters  which  decadent  feudalism  and  the  gild  and  open-field 
systems  had  placed  upon  agriculture  and  industry  were 
stricken  off.  "With  the  enclosing  of  fields  and  the  turning  of 
arable  land  into  pasture  for  sheep  came  an  improvement  in 
the  old  wasteful  methods  of  agriculture  and  stock-raising 
which  doubled  and  trebled  the  output  of  the  realm.  The 
dissolution  of  the  monasteries  placed  a  vast  property  which 
had  been  hitherto  administered  merely  for  subsistence  into 
the  hands  of  men  who  utilized  it  for  profit.  Means  of  ex 
change  increased ;  the  middleman  appeared  and  the  broker  in 
grain;  trading-companies,  most  significant  for  the  develop 
ment  of  the  new  world,  and  ready  money  seeking  investment. 
The  old  economic  fabric  had  given  way  before  a  new.  The 
victory  of  the  Armada  seemed  to  be  the  occasion  for  suddenly 
displaying  the  great  progress  made  since  the  Wars  of  the 
Roses.  A  taste  for  literature  and  the  drama,  fine  clothes  and 
houses,  music  and  art  began  to  invade  the  middle  class.  Not 
only  the  control  of  the  sea  but  the  energy  and  wealth  stored 
away  by  the  English  nation  during  the  sixteenth  century 
made  the  colonization  of  America  a  possibility.  Nor  was  it 


20  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

less  important  that  the  settlement  of  domestic  and  foreign 
quarrels  allowed  the  subjects  of  James  to  spend  money  upon 
enterprises  which  would  have  been  hazardous  in  the  extreme 
in  any  previous  ten  decades.  In  1606  the  moment  was  indeed 
propitious  for  colonization. 

Out  of  the  economic  tangle  of  the  sixteenth  century  came 
two  varieties  of  men  interesting  to  us:  the  capitalists  with 
money  to  invest,  or,  as  the  phrase  went,  "to  adventure,"  and 
the  "planters,"  the  men  anxious  to  try  their  fortunes  in  a 
new  land.  The  rise  of  towns,  the  distribution  of  the  mon 
astic  lands  and  of  the  huge  estates  which  escheated  to  the 
Crown  during  or  after  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  and  which 
were  mostly  granted  to  gentlemen  without  titles,  the  new 
agriculture,  the  new  manufacturing — all  produced  a  new 
class  of  men  Avith  ready  money.  The  prodigious  success  of  the 
Muscovy,  Levant,  and  East  India  Companies  made  this  class 
willing  to  risk  a  great  deal  for  the  hope  of  large  profits.  The 
very  same  events  had  turned  tenants  from  their  fathers' 
fields ;  had  left  monks  homeless ;  had  deprived  apprentices  and 
journeymen  of  their  own  tasks,  and  had  thus  created  a  class 
of  unemployed  men  whose  vigor  and  ambitions  were  great. 
Then  the  vast  amounts  of  silver  poured  from  the  mines  of 
Peru  had,  by  a  sort  of  poetic  justice,  provided  men  with 
good  reasons  for  emigration  to  the  new  continent  whence  the 
silver  came.  The  value  of  money  had  declined,  prices  had 
risen  in  consequence  and  were  in  1600,  as  a  result  of  this  and 
many  contributory  causes,  two  or  three  times  what  they  had 
been  in  1500.  Every  one  whose  income  was  derived  from 
money  payments  lost,  of  course,  a  large  proportion  of  their 
means  of  support,  and  many  families  turned  out  to  make 
their  own  fortunes  the  younger  sons  they  could  no  longer  af 
ford  to  maintain.  Not  only  had  the  economic  crisis  made  the 
English  nation  rich  enough  to  undertake  the  colonization  of 
America,  not  only  did  the  political  situation  allow  it  thus  to 
divert  its  energies,  but  the  two  had  together  produced  the  in 
dividuals  needed  to  occupy  the  new  country. 

The  great  movements  of  the  time  had  also  worked  to  pre- 


THE  ENGLISH  GENESIS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES          21 

pare  individuals  for  migration  to  a  new  land  where  the  pos 
sibilities  of  economic  and  personal  development  were  not 
cramped  by  relics  of  feudal  law,  the  limitations  of  scholastic 
philosophy,  or  the  creeds  of  Kome.  The  Renaissance  had 
brought  to  the  individual  a  sense  of  power  utterly  foreign  to 
the  medieval  man  and,  as  well,  a  new  restlessness,  a  reckless 
curiosity,  and  a  love  of  adventure  for  its  own  sake.  The  six 
teenth  century  man  was  sure  that  knowledge  was  power;  that 
omniscience  was  possible;  and  that  any  man  might  attain  it. 
His  delight  in  physical  existence,  his  confidence  in  his  own 
ability,  led  him  to  look  upon  the  unknown,  and  indeed  the 
unknowable,  as  the  only  field  "whereby  a  notable  mind,"  in 
the  words  of  George  Beste,  "might  be  made  famous  and 
fortunate."  The  greater  the  danger,  the  larger  the  risk;  the 
larger  the  compensation,  the  greater  the  glory.  To  those 
eager  to  obtain  fame  and  wealth  in  the  conquest  of  the  phys 
ical  world,  the  Reformation  added  a  number  of  admirable, 
pious  men  and  women  desirous  of  finding  a  place  where  there 
^vere  no  fetters  upon  freedom  of  speech  and  of  worship,  and 
where,  in  consequence,  they  might  work  out  their  own  sal 
vation  in  the  way  they  believed  God  had  directed,  without 
interference  from  either  those  who  thought  them  heretics  or 
those  who  called  them  fools.  And  they  sought  not  a  place 
where  every  one  should  be  free  to  think  as  he  liked  and  do  as 
he  pleased,  but  a  place  where  all  men  should  agree  upon 
fundamentals  and  whence  all  others  could  be  expelled.  The 
saving  of  their  own  souls,  their  own  obedience  to  God's  com 
mands  as  to  temporal  and  spiritual  observance,  were  the 
reasons  for  their  coming.  The  self-same  arguments  that 
drove  William  Bradford  and  John  Winthrop  from  the  Eng 
lish  Church  led  them  to  exile  Roger  Williams  and  the  Quakers 
from  Plymouth  and  Boston. 

Curiosity,  the  spirit  of  adventure,  an  eager  search  for  the 
Northwest  Passage  to  China  led  the  first  English  explorers 
to  American  waters,  but  their  reports  of  the  possibilities  of  the 
land  rather  than  their  own  experiences  fired  the  minds  of 
' '  adventurer ' '  and  ' '  planter ' '  alike.  The  returned  navigators 


22  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

described  the  surpassing  climate  whose  warmth  raised  ex 
pectations  of  growing  lemons  and  olives  in  Maine !  Wine 
could  certainly  be  made  in  large  quantities,  they  declared ;  the 
silk  worm  would  flourish;  spices  of  all  sorts  either  abounded 
or  could  be  cultivated;  gold  was  plentiful  but  would  have  to 
be  mined.  These  samples  of  the  saner  predictions  made  were 
all  proven  true  to  the  average  mind  by  the  enormous  profits 
made  from  a  cargo  of  sassafras  bark  brought  back  by  Gosnold. 
That  they  knew  much  more  about  the  country  than  we  can 
prove  they  knew,  is  certain.  Laudonniere  and  other  Hugue 
nots  who  escaped  from  Fort  Caroline  were  in  London  as  early 
as  1566  and  lived  with  Raleigh  and  the  Gilberts;  three  of 
Hawkins 's  men  who  made  their  way  across  the  continent  from 
Mexico  to  Maine  and  were  brought  home  by  French  fishermen 
were  closeted  with  merchants  and  promoters.  Walsingham, 
the  Secretary  of  State,  Peckham,  and  others  listened  to  what 
they  had  to  say  and  studied  carefully  the  records  of  Ver- 
razano's  voyage  along  the  Atlantic  coast  in  1524,  of  Cartier's 
voyage  to  the  St.  Lawrence  ten  years  later,  and  no  doubt 
many  maps  and  narratives  which  are  since  lost.  Gilbert  even 
consulted  the  famous  astrologer  and  alchemist,  Dr.  Dee,  as 
to  the  possibilities  of  the  new  land,  and,  as  Dee  records  in 
his  diary,  "I,  Mr.  Awdrian  Gilbert,  and  John  Davis  went  by 
appointment  to  Mr.  Secretary  Beale  his  house  where  only  we 
four  were  secret,  and  we  made  Mr.  Secretary  privy  of  the 
northwest  passage."  Nevertheless,  despite  the  explorers  and 
the  writing  in  the  stars,  the  limitations  of  their  knowledge 
were  astonishing.  Gilbert,  for  instance,  seems  to  have  be 
lieved  the  new  country  peopled  by  fauns ! 

Impelled  by  some  such  considerations  as  these,  heartened 
by  the  tales  of  explorers,  a  body  of  merchants  and  gentlemen 
contributed  a  considerable  sum  of  money,  secured  in  1606  the 
charter  of  a  joint-stock  company  from  the  Crown,  permitting 
them  to  exploit  and  settle  the  new  Virginia,  as  the  whole  At 
lantic  coast  was  then  called.  After  some  delay,  one  hundred 
and  twenty  men  sailed  from  the  Thames  in  December  1606, 
in  three  ships  furnished  by  the  London  part  of  the  Virginia 


THE  ENGLISH  GENESIS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES          23 

Company.  Landing  in  May  1607,  they  began  the  first  per 
manent  settlement  in  the  present  United  States,  at  James 
town,  in  the  very  sort  of  locality  which  the  sensible  instruc 
tions  they  carried  explicitly  warned  them  against.  They  put 
up  the  first  rough  shacks  on  a  little  peninsula  in  the  James 
Eiver,  near  a  strip  of  woods  affording  Indians  an  excellent 
cover  for  attack,  and  besides  a  pestilential  bit  of  marsh  and 
stagnant  back-water.  The  "planters"  too,  for  the  most  part 
adventurers  and  down-at-the-heel  gentlemen  anxious  to  make 
a  fortune,  all  of  them  a  thoroughly  unpractical  lot,  had  not 
come  to  work  for  a  living  but  to  become  rich  without  work 
ing.  When,  therefore,  they  found  that  pearls  and  nuggets 
of  gold  were  not  to  be  picked  up  on  the  banks  of  the  James; 
that  the  inhabitants  had  little  worth  stealing;  and  that  the 
Virginia  rivers  did  not  lead  to  China,  they  sulked  and  shirked 
and  became  mutinous.  The  food  began  to  get  low;  once 
rats  broke  into  the  granary;  once  fire  consumed  both  houses 
and  food.  One  year  after  the  founding  of  Jamestown,  only 
fifty-three  out  of  one  hundred  and  ninety-seven  persons  who 
had  landed  there  were  still  alive,  and  the  quarrels  of  the 
leaders,  the  hostility  and  thievery  of  the  Indians,  and  the 
lack  of  food  seemed  certain  to  destroy  the  colony.  The  situ 
ation  seems  to  have  been  saved  by  the  one  man  of  sense 
on  the  ground,  a  professional  soldier  fresh  from  a  romantic 
life  as  a  free  lance  in  Hungary  and  a  galley  slave  in  Con 
stantinople,  whom  the  capitalists  in  England  had  hired  to 
accompany  the  expedition,  Captain  John  Smith.  He  hanged 
the  mutinous;  pacified  the  Indians  and  bought  corn  from 
them;  and  forced  the  laggards  to  work  by  explaining  that 
the  Company's  rules  provided  that  all  should  share  in  com 
mon  both  the  food  and  the  work,  and  that  he  who  would  not 
work  should  not  eat.  The  Company  in  England,  taught  by 
experience,  sent  over  artisans  and  laborers  to  replace  the 
lazy,  adventurous  spirits  who  had  succumbed  to  malaria  and 
fever;  and  finally  put  in  charge  of  the  Colony  in  1611  an 
other  professional  soldier,  Sir  Thomas  Dale,  who  governed 
the  settlers  by  the  military  rules  then  in  use  in  European 


24  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

armies  and  produced  not  only  order  and  industry,  but 
church-going  and  perhaps  piety ! 

Meanwhile,  in  the  North,  the  Plymouth  branch  of  the  Vir 
ginia  Company  had  explored  the  New  England  coast  and 
had  planted  one  colony  in  Maine,  which  stayed  out  the  winter 
of  1607-8  and  promptly  returned  in  the  spring  with  harrow 
ing  tales  of  the  severity  of  the  climate  and  the  definite  in 
formation  that  lemons,  olives,  and  the  silk-worm  did  not 
flourish  there.  Scarcely  a  year  followed,  however,  without 
bringing  some  voyager  to  the  northern  coasts,  among  them 
Captain  John  Smith,  Samuel  Argall  from  Virginia,  Cham- 
plain  from  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  many  Dutch  traders  from 
the  tiny  factories  they  began  to  establish  about  1614  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Long  Island  Sound.  Permanent  settlements 
there  were  none  between  the  James  and  the  St.  Croix,  but  the 
whole  coast  was  alive  with  fur-traders  and  fishermen  during 
the  long  summers,  a  few  of  whom  at  times  stayed  out  the 
winter,  and  all  of  whom  were  doing  a  valuable  work  in  chart 
ing  the  coast  and  in  making  known  to  Englishmen  its  pecu 
liarities  and  resources.  The  shores  of  Massachusetts  Bay 
were  by  no  means  an  unknown  region  when  the  Mayflower 
with  about  one  hundred  souls  on  board  came  to  anchor  off 
Provincetown  in  December  1620. 

Thirty-five  members  of  a  congregation  of  Englishmen  at 
Leyden  had  left  Holland,  not  because  they  could  not  worship 
there  as  they  wished,  but  because  they  found  it  hard  to 
make  a  living,  saw  their  children  losing  their  English  speech 
and  habits,  and  feared  that  the  renewal  of  the  war  with 
Spain  might  actually  put  their  lives  in  danger.  In  the  new 
country,  they  could  not  fare  much  worse,  they  argued,  nor 
run  much  greater  risks  and  would  probably  be,  in  the  end, 
far  freer  and  more  comfortable.  They  had  arranged  with 
some  London  merchants  to  finance  their  expedition,  in  return 
for  which  they  agreed  to  put  the  proceeds  of  their  labors 
into  a  "common  store"  for  seven  years,  at  the  expiration 
of  which  land  should  be  assigned  to  each  family  and  a  pro 
portional  division  made  of  the  joint  property  of  the  mer- 


THE  ENGLISH  GENESIS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES          25 

chants  and  the  settlers.  Some  of  their  friends  in  England  had 
been  induced  to  join  them  and  a  good  many  laborers  and 
craftsmen  had  been  hired  by  the  merchants  to  accompany 
them  to  work  on  the  latter 's  behalf.  The  little  colony  at 
Plymouth  was  by  no  means  homogeneous,  in  character  or  in 
aims,  and  the  strict  religious  life  of  the  Pilgrims  irked  the 
laborers  sent  by  the  merchants.  The  common  stock  was  a 
failure,  as  it  had  been  at  Jamestown,  and,  after  some  years 
of  suffering  and  privation,  as  severe  as  that  at  Jamestown, 
though  not  by  any  means  as  fatal,  Plymouth  was  sheltering 
a  fairly  prosperous  band  of  about  three  hundred  men  and 
women. 

Soon  after  their  arrival,  the  adjacent  shores  of  Massachu 
setts  Bay  were  dotted  writh  little  villages  of  log  huts,  hous 
ing  such  fur-traders  and  adventurers  as  Thomas  Morton  of 
Merrymount  and  Robert  Gorges  of  Wessagusset ;  a  small  band 
of  men  settled  at  Dorchester  and  another  at  Salem,  all  un 
der  grants  from  the  Council  for  New  England,  to  whom 
James  I  had  delegated  in  1620  the  right  to  grant  to  colo 
nists  the  land  between  the  fortieth  and  forty-eighth  parallels. 
Most  of  these  settlements  were  soon  absorbed  into  the  Colony 
of  Massachusetts  Bay,  founded  by  the  arrival  of  the  Great 
Emigration  at  Boston  in  1630  under  John  Winthrop  and 
Thomas  Dudley.  In  contrast  to  the  fur-traders,  who  had 
money  and  servants  but  were  not  colonists,  and  to  the  Pil 
grims,  who  possessed  numbers  but  few  worldly  goods,  the 
Puritans  were  well  provided  with  both  and  came  for  the  ex 
press  purpose  of  founding  a  new  state  in  the  wilderness  on 
the  model  laid  down  in  the  Bible.  Several  of  them  had  held 
positions  of  prominence  in  England,  most  of  them  had  some 
property,  and,  with  their  retainers,  furniture,  and  domestic 
animals,  they  soon  established  around  Boston  a  number  of 
small  but  thriving  towns,  whose  population  was  constantly 
augmented  by  new  arrivals  from  England. 

Indeed,  so  marked  was  the  strength  and  wealth  of  the  Bay 
Colony  that  its  malcontents  seceded  and  founded  Providence, 
Rhode  Island,  the  River  Towns,  New  Haven,  and  New  Hamp- 


26  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

shire,  without  hindering  its  own  rapid  growth.  The  settle 
ment  of  New  England  was  in  a  sense  merely  the  expansion 
of  Massachusetts.  Meanwhile,  Lord  Baltimore  had  founded 
in  Maryland  a  colony  meant  to  be  a  refuge  for  Eoman  Cath 
olics  persecuted  in  England;  the  Swedes  had  set  up  factories 
along  the  Delaware;  the  Dutch  had  extended  their  trading- 
posts  along  the  Hudson  and  Long  Island  Sound.  By  1640, 
the  whole  Atlantic  coast  was  fringed  with  colonists  all  of 
whom  had  arrived  in  a  single  generation,  the  great  bulk  of 
whom  had  come  within  the  single  decade,  1630-1640,  to  a 
land  on  which  it  had  hardly  seemed  possible  in  1588  that 
an  English  colony  would  ever  exist. 

The  explanation  of  this  rapid  growth  and  of  the  perma 
nence  of  the  English  colonies  is  to  be  found  partly  in  the 
extremely  advantageous  character  of  the  land  for  the  pur 
poses  of  settlement.  The  soil  was  fertile,  the  climate  tem 
perate,  the  rainfall  varied  and  dependable,  making  possible 
a  great  variety  of  crops  and  in  particular  allowing  the  pro 
duction  of  all  the  staples  to  which  the  colonists  had  been 
accustomed  in  Europe.  The  change  in  their  mode  of  life  was 
not,  therefore,  too  violent,  as  had  been  the  case  with  the 
Spanish  and  the  French.  The  numerous  rivers  were  so  many 
highways  opening  the  country  for  miles  inland  to  exploita 
tion  at  a  time  when  the  making  of  roads  would  have  opposed 
insuperable  obstacles  to  its  exploration  and  settlement.  The 
influence  of  the  land  upon  the  people  who  came  was  good. 
It  attracted  serious,  hard-working  men  and  women,  looking 
for  homes,  whose  energy  and  resourcefulness  were  developed 
by  life  in  a  climate  too  cold  to  make  existence  easy.  From 
the  elements  that  had  fatally  distracted  the  attention  of  the 
Spaniards — precious  metals  and  luxuriant  vegetation — it  was 
entirely  free,  and  forced  the  colonists  to  develop  profitable 
industries  by  their  own  labor.  The  treasure-seekers,  the 
merely  adventurous,  the  lazy,  the  stupid  were  soon  eliminated 
and  the  population  was  recruited  only  from  the  more  desir 
able  European  emigrants. 

Nor  was  it  without  a  deep  thankfulness  and  sense  of  its 


THE  ENGLISH  GENESIS  OP  THE  UNITED  STATES          27 

significance  that  Winthrop  wrote,  "God  hath  cleared  our 
title. ' '  Perhaps  the  character  of  the  land,  perhaps  chance, 
had  made  the  coast  Indians  weak,  and  they  had  been  further 
decimated  by  pestilence  just  before  the  English  settlers  ap 
peared  at  Jamestown  and  at  Plymouth.  In  addition,  num 
bers  were  swept  off  by  strong  drink  which  acted  upon  their 
unaccustomed  frames  like  virulent  poison,  and  by  the  measles 
and  smallpox  which  they  caught  from  the  whites  and  which 
raged  as  epidemic  fevers,  deadly  as  the  plague.  While  it  is 
not  probable  that  the  English  were  influenced  solely  by  a 
desire  to  insure  the  Indians'  welfare,  the  fact  remains  that 
one  and  all  they  treated  them  with  courtesy  and  did  not 
rouse  their  antagonism.  Henry  Hudson,  in  particular,  so 
entertained  the  chiefs  along  the  Hudson  in  1609  when  he 
explored  that  river,  that  the  Iroquois  were  ever  after  firm 
friends  of  the  English.  No  doubt  the  attack  upon  them  by 
Champlain  on  the  Richelieu  River  that  same  year  and  the 
prodigious  fright  they  received  from  the  firing  of  his  blun 
derbuss  contributed  to  the  general  result.  In  time,  how 
ever,  as  the  coast  Indians  learned  that  settlement  by  the 
English  meant  not  only  fire-water,  guns,  iron  hatchets,  and 
kettles  so  superior  in  operation  to  their  own  crude  tools 
that  life  became  a  pleasure,  but  the  loss  of  their  land  and  the 
destruction  of  the  game,  hostility  developed  apace  and  gave 
rise  to  sporadic  outbreaks  which  were  with  one  or  two  ex 
ceptions  crushed  by  the  colonists  without  great  difficulty.  On 
the  whole,  it  is  true,  that  only  in  the  first  years  of  the  century 
were  the  Indians  a  menace  to  the  existence  of  the  English 
settlements. 

Nevertheless,  had  it  not  been  for  the  founding  of  Massa 
chusetts  Bay  and  the  presence  around  Boston  of  thousands, 
where  at  Plymouth  and  Jamestown  were  only  hundreds,  the 
fate  of  the  United  States  might  have  been  different.  Massa 
chusetts  was  a  tower  of  strength  to  the  people  of  New  Haven 
and  the  River  Towns  in  their  resistance  to  the  encroach 
ments  of  the  Dutch.  The  little  collection  of  huts  inside 
the  rough  palisade  at  New  Amsterdam  was  rather  a  trading- 


28  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

post  than  a  permanent  settlement,  for  its  population  were 
Indian  traders,  sailors,  and  the  cosmopolitan  crew  which  had 
haunted  the  New  England  coast  until  dislodged  by  the  set 
tlers  who  had  not  scrupled  to  eject  them  bag  and  baggage 
as  undesirable  tenants.  From  Holland  were  sent  out  by  the 
Dutch  "West  India  Company  "governors"  whose  duty  it  was 
to  control  the  fur-trade  and  make  money  for  the  Company. 
Yet  weak  as  New  Amsterdam  was,  had  it  not  been  for  the 
existence  of  Massachusetts,  the  attempts  of  Kieft  and  Stuy- 
vesant  to  get  control  of  the  Connecticut  River  valley  might 
have  been  successful,  more  settlers  might  have  come,  and 
the  English  conquest  of  1665  might  have  added  to  the  other 
elements  already  in  America  a  really  considerable  amount 
of  Dutch  blood  and  tradition.  To  the  south,  the  Swedes 
succumbed  to  the  Dutch.  Thus,  little  more  than  half  a  cen 
tury  after  the  first  English  settlers  arrived,  about  eighty 
thousand  people  were  scattered  along  the  coast  from  Maine  to 
North  Carolina,  all  of  whom  recognized  the  English  King 
and  the  English  law  and  the  vast  majority  of  whom  had 
come  from  England  itself. 

The  most  vital  fact,  however,  explaining  the  permanence  of 
English  possession  is  found  in  the  existence  of  maize,  an 
indigenous  and  nutritious  food-plant,  which  could  be  culti 
vated  successfully  where  the  European  foodstuffs  could  not 
be  grown.  Wheat,  barley,  rye,  or  oats  needed  a  cleared  field, 
deep  ploughing,  and  constant  labor.  A  hole  made  with  a 
sharp  stick  in  the  open  fields  or  in  any  forest  clearing,  a 
bit  of  fish  dropped  in  and  covered  with  a  little  dirt  knocked 
in  with  the  foot,  a  few  kernels  of  maize  covered  in  a  similarly 
primitive  manner  and  the  whole  process  of  agriculture  was 
finished.  Neither  the  Jamestown  nor  Plymouth  colonists  nor 
many  and  many  a  trader  would  have  lived  to  tell  the  tale 
but  for  this  maize  which  they  could  raise  or  buy  from  the 
Indians.  At  first  serious  discussions,  which  amuse  us,  took 
place  over  the  edibility  of  shell  fish,  turkeys,  and  blueberries, 
and  grave  doubts  were  felt  about  the  safety  of  drinking 
the  water,  instead  of  the  "small-beer"  to  which  they  had 


THE  ENGLISH  GENESIS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES          29 

been  accustomed  in  England.  These  doubts  were  vanquished 
by  a  little  experience  induced  by  necessity,  and  it  is  hardly 
an  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  great  majority  of  the  colo 
nists  supported  life  even  during  the  first  half  century  largely 
from  indigenous  food-products. 

But  America  would  never  have  counted  many  inhabitants 
had  it  not  provided  them  with  a  profitable  return  for  their 
labor  in  the  shape  of  commodities  which  could  be  sent  to 
England  in  exchange  for  the  clothes,  shoes,  books,  and  lux 
uries  to  which  they  had  been  accustomed.  The  market  was 
soon  overstocked  with  sassafras,  but  tobacco  furnished  the 
Southern  colonies  a  marketable  staple  whose  importance  in 
the  upbuilding  of  the  United  States  cannot  be  exaggerated. 
The  simplicity  of  its  cultivation,  the  possibility  of  employing 
unskilled  labor,  the  simple  method  of  curing  it  discovered 
about  1616  by  Rolfe,  made  it  the  decisive  influence  in  en 
suring  the  growth  of  the  young  colony  on  the  James.  By 
this  time,  it  was  well  known  in  England  that  olives,  wine, 
and  silk  were  as  legendary  as  gold  and  pearls,  and  expect 
ant  colonists  for  New  England  needed  to  be  assured  of  the 
presence  of  some  tangible  asset.  The  cod,  whose  dense 
schools  stopping  the  progress  of  ships  had  attracted  Breton 
and  Portuguese  fishermen  as  early  perhaps  as  1450,  now 
became  a  staple  of  the  thriving  trade  of  Boston  and  Plymouth, 
where  the  pious  Bradford  and  his  lieutenant,  John  Alden, 
developed  an  amazing  commercial  sagacity  for  men  who  had 
renounced  worldly  aims.  Along  the  New  England  coast  the 
supply  of  fur-bearing  animals  was  soon  too  much  reduced 
to  make  the  trade  profitable,  but  New  Amsterdam  and  Fort 
Orange  (Albany)  rivaled  Tadousac,  Quebec,  and  Montreal 
as  fur  centers.  The  Hudson  and  Mohawk  tapped  the 
home  land  of  the  great  Iroquois  tribes  and  were  the  natural 
outlet  for  their  spoils  of  the  chase.  By  all  these  varied 
factors,  the  advantages  of  the  site,  the  absence  of  powerful 
Indian  occupants,  the  value  of  maize,  tobacco,  fish,  and  furs, 
the  permanence  of  the  English  colonies  in  America  was  as 
sured  as  early  as  1640.  The  preponderance  of  the  English 


30  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

over  all  other  elements  of  the  population  made  it  clear 
that  they  would  mold  the  destinies  of  the  growing  nation 
and  absorb  foreign  elements  rather  than  be  themselves 
absorbed. 


IV 
THE  ECONOMIC  GROWTH  OF  THE  COLONIES 

IN  1665,  the  whole  Atlantic  coast  passed  finally  into  English 
control;  in  1776,  the  coast  colonies  declared  themselves  in 
dependent  of  England.  The  chief  task  for  the  historian  of 
colonial  history  is  the  explanation  of  this  latter  fact — the 
most  important  single  fact  in  our  annals — the  depicting  of 
the  forces  which  enabled  us  to  deserve  and  to  win  our  in 
dependence.  The  fundamental  cause  of  the  Revolution  lies 
in  the  rapid  economic  growth  of  the  colonies  which  made 
them  in  1775  strong  enough  and  wealthy  enough  to  stand 
alone.  Independence  was  necessarily  an  accomplished  fact 
which  no  fiat  could  create  and  which  was  in  1776  a  condition 
resulting  from  the  operation  of  forces  in  the  decades  just 
past.  The  Revolution  by  no  means  created  thirteen  States; 
it  declared  the  already  accomplished  fact  that  those  thirteen 
States  were  independent  entities,  distinct  from  England  in 
ideals  and  interests,  strong  enough  to  maintain  themselves 
against  the  rest  of  the  world,  experienced  in  self-government, 
and  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  liberty.  The  premise  of  the 
Revolution  is  the  preceding  century  of  colonial  history,  and, 
unless  we  study  that  century  of  growth  from  the  point  of 
view  of  its  most  significant  result,  we  shall  be  closing  our 
eyes  to  some  of  the  most  vital  facts  in  our  history.  These 
are  the  extent  and  character  of  the  economic  growth  which 
made  us  strong  enough  to  resist;  the  system  of  self-govern 
ment  which  had  enabled  us  to  manage  our  own  affairs  so 
long  without  assistance  that  the  severing  of  the  political  and 
constitutional  ties  with  England  was  accomplished  literally 
by  writing  a  few  words  on  paper  declarative  of  the  exist- 

31 


32  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

ing  facts;  and  the  relations  of  the  colonies  to  the  mother- 
country  out  of  which  grew  those  tangible  constitutional  and 
political  issues  which  roused  so  great  an  antagonism  on 
either  side  of  the  ocean  as  to  result  in  actual  warfare.  The 
growth  of  the  colonies,  the  rise  of  American  democracy, 
States'  sovereignty,  these  are  the  chief  topics  of  colonial  his 
tory  between  1665  when  the  Atlantic  coast  became  English 
and  1776  when  the  colonies  declared  themselves  independent. 
The  most  important  fact  about  the  growth  of  the  thirteen 
colonies  is  its  extent.  Within  three  generations,  a  few  scat 
tered  groups  of  people  had  grown  by  natural  accretion  and 
by  immigration  into  the  elements  of  a  nation.  When  the 
Susan  Constant  anchored  in  the  James  River  in  1607,  a  few 
hundred  fur-traders  and  fishermen  were  in  the  habit  of 
spending  the  summers  on  the  Atlantic  coast;  by  1640,  the 
English  settlers  already  numbered  thousands,  nearly  16,000 
of  whom  were  in  the  Bay  Colony  alone;  and  by  1660,  about 
80,000  souls  were  building  homes  in  the  new  continent. 
Within  a  century,  the  number  of  colonies  had  doubled,  and 
the  population,  as  nearly  as  it  can  now  be  estimated,  was 
twenty  times  as  large  as  in  1660,  having  reached  the  astound 
ing  figure  of  1,600,000.  Clearly,  if  this  development  be  any 
criterion,  the  period  preceding  the  Eevolution  was  not  one  of 
acute  suffering  and  distress.  And  the  Revolution  itself  only 
stimulated  the  resort  of  people  thither,  for  thirty  years  later 
the  first  census  of  the  United  States  claimed  a  total  popu 
lation  of  4,000,000.  Here,  in  fact,  lies  the  fundamental  cause 
of  the  Revolution:  a  century  of  growth  had  made  the  col 
onies  strong  enough  and  wealthy  enough  to  stand  alone. 
Of  this  the  leaders  were  thoroughly  aware.  As  the  Decla 
ration  of  Causes  of  July  4,  1775,  finely  and  truly  said:  "We 
gratefully  acknowledge  as  signal  instances  of  the  divine  favor 
towards  us  that  His  Providence  would  not  permit  us  to  be 
called  into  this  severe  controversy,  until  we  were  grown  up  to 
our  present  strength,  had  been  previously  exercised  in  warlike 
operations,  and  possessed  of  the  means  of  defending  our* 
selves." 


THE  ECONOMIC  GROWTH  OF  THE  COLONIES  33 

The  story  of  this  most  significant  growth,  however,  does 
not  describe  the  settling  of  thirteen  colonies  which  normally 
developed  by  the  increase  of  population  and  interchange 
of  ideas  into  the  thirteen  States  of  the  Revolutionary  epoch. 
It  tells  of  a  scarcely  broken  stream  of  new  emigrants  from 
Europe,  with  varied  customs,  ideals,  and  traditions;  of  a 
constant  and  vital  transformation  decade  after  decade  of 
every  aspect  of  colonial  life.  The  colonies  in  1760  were  not 
only  collectively  and  individually  bigger  and  richer;  they 
were  individually  totally  dissimilar  in  population,  in  govern 
ment,  in  ideals  from  the  tiny  communities  extant  in  1660. 
The  first  settlers,  indeed,  far  from  giving  final  form  or  even 
definitive  direction  to  the  various  States,  in  most  cases  merely 
began  the  formal  existence  of  that  particular  political  entity, 
which,  after  a  century  and  more  of  transformation  and 
astonishing  growth,  ultimately  became  one  of  the  States  which 
declared  themselves  sovereign  in  1776.  To  suppose  that  the 
Massachusetts  of  1640,  the  New  York  of  1689,  the  Pennsyl 
vania  of  1700  was  in  anything  more  than  a  technical  political 
and  constitutional  sense  the  father  of  the  State  of  1776  is 
to  lose  sight  of  the  most  significant  fact  in  colonial  history, 
to  forget  the  growth  which  made  the  Revolution  possible. 
In  addition,  it  indicates  our  failure  to  remember  that  the 
difference  in  development  during  that  century  of  those  who 
came  to  America  and  those  who  remained  in  England  was 
perhaps  the  main  cause  of  that  disagreement  out  of  which 
the  Revolution  ostensibly  grew.  The  very  extent  of  the  trans 
formation  is  a  cardinal  point  to  stress.  In  1760,  the  thirteen 
colonies  were  not  English;  they  were  already  American. 

While  there  is  always  danger  of  exaggerating  the  extent 
of  the  change  and  of  thus  seeming  to  forget  that  fundamental 
qualities  of  the  people  and  basic  notions  of  government  can 
be  directly  traced  to  the  influence  of  the  first  settlers,  it  is 
nevertheless  only  necessary  to  remind  the  reader  that  dan 
cing,  card-playing,  and  theater-going  were  common  amuse 
ments  in  Revolutionary  Boston  to  show  him  how  great  a 
change  had  taken  place  since  the  strict  days  of  John  Cotton. 


34  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Indeed,  Harvard  College,  founded  as  a  bulwark  of  the  the 
ology  dominant  in  1640,  had  by  1700  already  become  the 
home  of  liberal  thought  to  the  utter  dismay  of  the  orthodox, 
and  the  leaven  had  so  spread  in  the  community  that  even 
the  Great  Awakening  of  1745  was  wholly  insufficient  to  stifle 
the  theological  dissent  from  the  older  Calvinism.  In  Penn 
sylvania,  a  militia,  courts,  a  hierarchy  of  judicial  officials, 
and  a  police  force  in  Philadelphia  bore  eloquent  testimony  to 
the  extent  of  the  departure  from  the  ideals  of  Penn. 

The  very  elements  of  the  future  nation,  much  less  the 
nation  itself,  were  not  on  this  continent  in  1660.  Six  of 
the  thirteen  colonies,  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania, 
the  Carolinas,  and  Georgia,  came  into  existence  after  the 
Eestoration.1  To  the  Pilgrims,  Puritans,  and  Cavaliers  were 
added  other  elements  of  which  several  outnumbered  the 
original  English  settlers.  There  were  probably  more  Quak 
ers  around  Philadelphia  in  1690,  and  more  Germans  in  New 
York  and  Pennsylvania  in  1715,  than  there  were  English  on 
the  whole  continent  in  1634.  The  Salzburgers,  the  Palatines, 
the  Huguenots,  the  Scotch-Irish  from  Ulster,  the  Portuguese 
Jews  were  racially  and  religiously  dissimilar  from  the  Pil 
grims  and  Puritans  and  brought  (except  the  Scotch-Irish) 
totally  different  languages,  political  traditions,  and  social  cus 
toms  whose  marks  are  still  as  distinct  in  the  districts  where 
they  settled  as  the  impress  of  the  Puritans  upon  Massa 
chusetts.  Most  of  these  dissimilar  elements  settled  along  the 
coast  after  1700  and  no  small  proportion  came  after  1740. 
The  growth  which  the  colonies  had  attained  by  1760  was 
due  less  to  the  normal  increase  of  those  already  here  in  1660 
than  to  direct  immigration  from  Europe. 

The  character  of  the  individuals  who  came  was  also  vastly 
different.  With  the  Pilgrims  had  come  many  laborers  sent 
over  by  the  merchants  who  financed  their  expedition;  Win- 
throp  and  his  partners  had  also  paid  the  passage  of  many 

1  New  York,  of  course,  belonged  to  Holland  before  1660,  and  the 
abortive  settlements  of  the  Swedes  along  the  Delaware  seem  scarcely 
worth  reckoning. 


THE  ECONOMIC  GROWTH  OF  THE  COLONIES  35 

artisans  and  farm-hands,  and  the  settlers  alive  in  Virginia 
were  largely  descendants  of  men  and  women  induced  to  come 
by  the  Virginia  Company's  promises  or  payments.  Still,  the 
proportion  of  the  well-to-do  who  paid  their  own  transporta 
tion  and  came  to  the  new  country  with  seeds,  cattle,  tools, 
and  ready  money  was  much  greater  before  1660  than  it  was 
after  that  date.  By  1700,  the  first  extravagant  expectations 
of  great  wealth  and  wine-growing  had  long  been  definitely 
abandoned ;  the  Seven  Cities  of  Cibola  had  been  transplanted 
to  inaccessible  spots  in  the  interior,  and  navigators  had  found 
the  Northwest  Passage  unpleasantly  elusive;  the  Atlantic 
coast  was  rapidly  being  stripped  of  fur-bearing  animals  and 
the  new  Hudson  Bay  Company  had  monopolized  the  trade 
with  northern  Canada.  The  possibilities  of  abnormal  profits 
in  trade  with  the  new  continent  had  disappeared,  and  the 
capitalists  who  had  financed  colonies  were  disappointed  with 
the  small  returns  and  declined  to  "adventure"  more  money. 
The  emigrants  were  with  every  decade  more  and  more 
recruited  from  those  driven  from  Europe  by  their  individual 
poverty.  Many  came  as  "indented"  servants,  who  in  return 
for  passage  allowed  the  ship-captain  to  auction  them  off  to  the 
highest  bidder,  binding  themselves  to  serve  him  for  five  or 
seven  years.  Most  of  the  labor  in  the  tobacco  fields  of  the 
Chesapeake  colonies  and  in  the  grain  fields  of  Pennsylvania 
and  New  Jersey  was  of  this  type.  At  the  end  of  the  term 
of  service,  the  colony  gave  him  land  and  his  late  master 
furnished  him  with  clothes,  seeds  and  tools.  He  began  life 
anew;  the  social  stigma  hitherto  attached  to  him  soon  dis 
appeared  and  he  became  a  full-fledged  citizen.  Many  polit 
ical  prisoners  of  excellent  and  desirable  stock  were  shipped 
over  by  Cromwell  and  by  James  II,  and  the  English  govern 
ment  also  attempted  to  mitigate  the  severity  of  the  criminal 
code  by  giving  those  condemned  to  death  or  to  long  terms 
of  imprisonment  the  option  of  transportation  to  the  colonies. 
More  of  these  were  sent  to  the  Barbadoes  and  the  West 
Indian  sugar  colonies  than  to  the  continent;  those  guilty  of 
the  petty  offences  then  punishable  by  hanging  were  hardly 


36  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

what  we  should  call  criminals;  but  these  unfortunates  as  well 
as  the  indented  servants  and  political  prisoners  were  very 
different  material  for  a  new  nation  from  the  stern,  capable, 
educated  men  and  women  who  followed  Winthrop  and  Brad 
ford,  Hooker  and  Davenport,  Calvert  and  Penn.  In  addition, 
many  and  many  a  cosmopolitan  adventurer  of  the  type  of 
Morton  of  Merry  mount,  many  a  smuggler  and  illicit  fur- 
trader,  who  fretted  at  the  restrictions  of  society,  came  to  the 
new  land  and  formed  with  kindred  spirits,  at  first  along  the 
coast  and  later  in  the  interior,  numerous  settlements  whose 
business,  good  and  bad,  was  in  volume  out  of  all  proportion 
to  their  size.  These  were  "the  stumbling  blocks"  in  New 
England's  Canaan,  the  tares  sprung  up  among  the  wheat. 
But  these  dare-devil,  careless  frontiersmen  formed  an  im 
portant  element  among  the  new  people  and  in  actual  numbers 
cannot  have  been  negligible;  we  must  not  forget  that  they 
too  left  descendants.  In  fact,  it  was  their  spirit  rather  than 
that  of  Puritan  and  Cavalier  that  became  the  dominant  note 
of  American  life  in  the  days  of  Jackson. 

These  emigrants  to  the  new  world,  however  their  object  in 
coming  changed  from  time  to  time,  were,  in  1760  as  in  the 
beginning,  a  sturdy  race  of  enthusiastic,  resourceful  radicals. 
Otherwise  they  had  not  come.  Whatever  the  motive  which 
led  them  to  America — the  difference  of  creed,  the  desire  to 
invest  capital,  the  lack  of  opportunity  to  make  a  living  at 
home,  ambition,  adventure,  restlessness — it  was  invariably 
their  discontent  with  what  existed,  and  their  faith  in  their 
own  ability  to  better  their  fortunes  which  led  the  emigrants 
thither.  The  result  was  striking.  Gradually  the  population 
of  Europe  was  sifted,  as  Stoughton  said,  that  "We  might 
plant  choice  grain  in  the  wilderness."  Gradually  as  the 
more  venturesome  were  drawn  into  the  colonies,  the  more 
conservative  were  left  at  home.  Those  whose  hatred  of  the 
pressure  of  creed,  of  social  convention,  or  poverty,  had  been 
sufficient  to  drive  across  three  thousand  miles  of  ocean  into 
an  unknown  wilderness  were  not  likely  to  rear  there  de 
scendants  who  would  brook  much  interference.  The  children 


THE  ECONOMIC  GROWTH  OF  THE  COLONIES  37 

of  such  men,  in  the  Governor  of  Pennsylvania's  vivid  phrase, 
"rode  restive."  They  preferred  the  possible  dangers  of 
change  to  the  continuance  of  slight  grievances.  Their  cousins 
in  England  were  normally  of  the  opposite  mind.  They  were 
the  descendants  of  the  men  who  had  preferred  to  endure 
what  they  knew  rather  than  face  perils  yet  unknown, — those 
too  contented  at  home  or  too  lacking  in  initiative  to  leave. 
A  century  and  a  half  of  emigration  had  cast  the  characters 
of  the  two  sections  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  in  different 
molds.  It  had  created  in  Americans  a  spirit,  a  temper  of 
different  metal  from  that  which  the  stirring  events  of  the 
same  period  had  produced  in  the  mother-country.  The  very 
growth  itself  furnished  the  possibility  and  almost  the  cer 
tainty  of  a  fundamental  disagreement  between  the  colonies 
and  England. 

Despite  its  rapidity  this  growth  in  population  had  not 
resulted  by  1760  in  a  fringe  of  continuous  settlement  from 
Maine  to  Georgia,  but  had  produced  rather  a  collection  of 
little  communities  dotted  along  the  coast,  reaching  in  places 
a  hundred  miles  inland,  all  effectually  separated  from  each 
other  by  days  of  traveling  by  water  or  land.1  A  week  spent 
between  Boston  and  Newport,  between  Providence  and  New 
York,  or  between  New  York  and  Philadelphia  was  by  no  means 
an  uncommon  experience  of  travelers  on  horseback  unin- 
cumbered  by  heavy  baggage;  and  the  various  little  com 
munities  were  in  point  of  fact  in  far  more  constant  com 
munication  with  London  and  the  West  Indies  than  with  each 
other.  Indeed,  even  in  New  England  the  settlement  was  very 
sparse;  the  acreage  of  primeval  forest  still  great;  the  roads 
poor  or  non-existent.  Connecticut  was  composed  in  1760  of 
three  or  four  little  groups  of  towns  widely  separated;  New 
York  of  a  little  cluster  around  the  city,  another  around  Al 
bany  and  a  third  up  the  Mohawk,  with  a  few  scattered  farms 
along  the  rivers.  Pennsylvania  strung  out  along  the  banks 
of  the  Delaware  and  its  tributaries,  or  pushed  down  the  fer- 

i  See  the  notably  careful  and  accurate  map  in  Channing's  History  of 
the  United  States,  I,  510. 


38  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

tile  valleys  of  the  Blue  Ridge.  There  was  in  1760,  and  in 
deed  in  1790,  no  geographical  or  economic  basis  for  a  single 
nation  or  a  single  government.  Nor  did  these  scattered 
groups,  already  acutely  conscious  of  their  political  identity, 
possess  any  economic  interest  in  common  or  any  economic 
bond  of  a  positive  character.  They  had  grown  strong  as 
thirteen  units,  not  as  a  whole;  and,  though  they  soon  came 
to  realize  that  some  sort  of  cooperation  would  be  necessary  to 
secure  that  freedom  from  English  interference  they  coveted, 
they  desired  freedom  individually,  not  collectively. 

The  only  economic  conditions  common  to  them  all  were 
negative  in  character:  the  lack  of  a  medium  of  direct  ex 
change  with  Europe  and  their  common  dependence  upon  the 
West  India  trade. 

The  three  thousand  miles  of  ocean  separating  America  from 
Europe  and  the  proximity  of  the  continent  to  the  West  Indies 
are  two  of  the  most  obvious  and  cardinal  facts  in  American 
history.  With  them  are  vitally  connected  in  some  fashion 
nearly  every  economic  and  governmental  issue  in  our  his 
tory — not  only  colonial  trade  and  development,  but  the  Revo 
lution,  the  Jay  Treaty,  Louisiana,  the  War  of  1812,  the  Tariff, 
the  Monroe  Doctrine,  and  much  more. 

Except  for  Virginia's  tobacco  and  South  Carolina's  indigo 
(cotton  was  not  grown  for  export  till  after  the  Revolution), 
the  colonial  products  were  too  bulky  for  export  and  were  in 
addition  not  sufficiently  salable  in  Europe  to  make  it  worth 
while  to  pay  the  freight  thither.  At  the  same  time  the  very 
general  lack  of  manufactures  in  the  colonies2  left  them  de 
pendent  upon  Europe  for  nearly  everything  which  the  mem 
bers  of  the  household  could  not  produce  with  their  own  hands. 
A  little  iron,  some  glass  and  cutlery  were  made  in  America, 
but  not  enough  in  quantity  to  supply  even  local  demand. 
Pins,  nails,  thread,  stationery,  tape,  knives,  and  the  like,  as 

2  "The  genius  of  the  people  in  these  colonies  is  as  little  turned  to 
manufacturing  goods  for  their  own  use  as  is  possible  to  suppose  in  any 
people  whatsoever."  Stephen  Hopkins,  Rights  of  the  Colonies  Exam 
ined,  13.  (1765.) 


THE  ECONOMIC  GROWTH  OF  THE  COLONIES  39 

well  as  French  millinery  and  English  broadcloth,  were  regu 
larly  imported  by  American  merchants.  For  all  this,  they 
must  pay,  and,  with  little  currency  in  the  colonies  and  that 
so  debased  that  the  English  would  not  accept  it  at  face  value, 
with  no  commodities  in  most  colonies  which  the  English 
wished  in  exchange,  the  merchants  were  forced  to  undertake 
a  round  of  regular  trading  ventures  in  order  to  pay  their 
European  bills.3 

The  West  India  colonies,  owned  by  England,  France,  Hol 
land,  and  Spain,  were  producing  great  amounts  of  sugar, 
then  scarce  and  correspondingly  expensive  in  Europe,  and 
were  therefore  making  huge  returns  to  the  owners  of  plan 
tations.  The  planters  preferred  to  buy  food  and  necessities 
from  the  continental  colonists  rather  than  divert  the  labor 
needed  to  produce  them  from  the  infinitely  more  lucrative 
work  of  cane  cultivation.  The  colonists  were  equally  glad  to 
find  so  near  at  hand  a  market  in  which  to  exchange  what 
they  raised  for  the  sugar,  molasses,  and  rum  so  highly  valued 
in  Europe.  The  ordinary  method  of  exchange  between  Bos 
ton  and  England  was  therefore  via  the  "West  Indies.  The 
New  England  ship  loaded  at  Boston  with  salt  fish  for  the 
slaves '  food  on  the  sugar  plantations,  with  staves  for  the 
barrels  and  hogsheads  in  which  the  sugar  and  molasses  were 
to  be  shipped,  with  boards,  window  frames,  and  all  the  various 
pieces  needed  for  constructing  the  planter's  house.  At  St. 
Christopher,  she  would  load  with  sugar  and  molasses,  pro 
ceed  to  London,  load  with  manufactured  goods,  and  so  re 
turn  to  Boston,  clearing  ordinary  between  fifty  and  one  hun 
dred  per  cent  profit.  We  know  of  a  captain  who  made 

3  The  difficulty  of  making  remittances  to  England  at  all,  even  by 
means  of  a  round  of  trading  voyages,  is  admirably  illustrated  by  the 
correspondence  between  William  Penn  and  his  American  agent,  James 
Logan.  "If  thou  canst  not  get  silver  ...  by  the  Madeiras  directly 
thither,  as  well  as  by  Barbadoes  with  Madeira  wine,  send  as  fast  as 
thou  canst  turn  our  cheap  corn,  flour,  and  bread  into  wine,  and  some 
wine  into  sugar,  home  for  supply."  Penn  to  Logan,  1704.  Penn  and 
Logan  Correspondence,  I,  340.  (Pennsylvania  Historical  Society,  Me 
moirs,  IX.) 


40  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

eight  hundred  per  cent  profit  off  a  cargo  of  salt  taken  into 
Baltimore,  and  we  find  merchants  considering  themselves  de 
frauded  if  the  net  profits  of  the  carrying  trade  fell  below 
one  hundred  per  cent.  Even  if  such  cases  were  not  as  com 
mon  as  the  evidence  seems  to  indicate,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  legitimate  profits  from  this  triangular  trade  were  very 
large. 

Another  triangular  trade,  of  which  the  West  Indies  were 
a  significant  factor,  was  far  more  lucrative  and  hence  even 
more  popular  in  New  England.  A  ship-load  of  inferior 
molasses  converted  into  Medford  rum  in  the  numerous  dis 
tilleries  in  Massachusetts  and  Rhode  Island  would  purchase 
from  the  sodden  chiefs  of  the  West  African  Coast  a  crowded 
ship-load  of  " black  ivory,"  whose  value  in  the  West  Indian 
sugar  plantations  or  the  Virginian  tobacco  fields  transcended 
many  times  the  costs  of  the  enterprise.  Rum,  molasses,  and 
slaves  became  the  solid  basis  of  many  a  colonial  fortune  and 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  men  and  women,  who  believed 
themselves  even  more  attentive  to  the  calls  of  conscience  than 
their  descendants  who  are  prompt  to  censure  this  nefarious 
traffic,  saw  in  it  absolutely  nothing  objectionable.  This  at 
titude  toward  slavery  and  the  slave-trade  in  the  eighteenth 
century  needs  to  be  most  carefully  borne  in  mind  by  those 
who  undertake  to  assign  the  moral  responsibility  for  negro 
slavery  in  the  South  in  1860.  It  is  also  incontestable  that 
the  Massachusetts  men  who  engaged  in  this  traffic  were  not 
one  whit  different  from  those  sterner  men  who  wrote  in  the 
Body  of  Liberties  in  1641,  "  There  shall  never  be  any  bond 
slaverie  villinage  or  Captivitie  amongst  us,  unless  it  be  law- 
full  Captives  taken  in  just  warres,  and  such  strangers  as 
willingly  sell  themselves  or  are  sold  to  us." 

The  significance  and  importance  of  the  existence  of  the 
West  India  Islands  in  the  colonial  and  revolutionary  periods 
can  scarcely  be  exaggerated.  So  great  were  the  profits,  so 
completely  did  any  commerce  whatever  rest  upon  one  or  the 
other  triangular  trade,  that  by  1760  the  colonists  had  come 
to  Defoe's  conclusion,  that  without  that  trade  they  would 


THE  ECONOMIC  GROWTH  OF  THE  COLONIES  41 

perish.4  To  their  minds,  the  results  from  it  in  the  cases  of 
individuals  and  of  communities  alike  were  so  tangible  and 
convincing  that  they  had  almost  ceased  to  believe  that  any 
other  forces  had  been  behind  the  exhilarating  growth  of  the 
past  decades. 

The  number  of  ships  clearing  from  New  York  had  in 
creased  from  64  in  1717  to  477  in  1762;  the  exports  to  Eng 
land  which  had  been  according  to  a  seemingly  trustworthy 
source  £18,000  in  1701  were  in  1767,  £61,000 ;  and  the  imports 
into  New  York  from  England,  which  were  of  course  the 
direct  fruits  of  the  West  India  trade,  had  risen  from  £31,910 
in  1701  to  the  enormous  figure  of  £417,957  in  1767.  A  glance 
at  such  a  balance-sheet  as  this  made  clear  to  colonial  mer 
chants  how  great  a  demand  for  English  goods  existed  in  the 
colonies,  and  how  utterly  incapable  they  were  of  carrying  on 
any  direct  trade  with  the  mother-country.  Indeed,  they 
knew  well  enough  that  the  English  cared  little  for  their  ex 
ports;  but  would  be  panic-stricken  at  the  idea  of  losing  a 
market  for  English  goods  of  which  the  total  imports  were 
annually  well  into  the  millions  of  pounds.  Above  all,  they 
were  afraid  of  losing  so  convenient  a  method  of  receiving  the 
West  India  products  at  their  own  doors  and  of  there  selling 
their  own  manufactures,  a  trade  from  which  they  derived 
great  profit  and  in  which  the  colonial  shippers  shouldered  the 
risks  of  loss  or  capture  at  sea. 

That  the  Navigation  Acts  were  intended  to  confine  this 
lucrative  trade  to  English  and  colonial  ships,  and  were  meant, 

•*  "The  very  Being  and  Subsistence  of  New  England  in  matters  of 
Trade  consists  in  and  depends  wholly  upon  their  Union  with  and  Sub 
jection  to  Great  Britain,  as  the  Growth  [i.  e.,  products]  of  their  Coun 
try,  which  is  the  only  Article  that  supports  their  Commerce,  is  taken 
off  by  the  British  Colonies  only.  .  .  .  Without  this  Export  those  Col 
onies  would  perish.  It  is  true,  the  Islands  [in  the  West  Indies]  would 
starve  for  want  of  provisions  too,  at  least  at  first;  but  on  the  Conti 
nent,  if  the  Islands  did  not  take  off  their  Product,  their  Lands  which 
they  have  been  at  a  vast  Expense  to  cure  and  clear  and  plant  would 
lie  useless  and  uncultivated.  .  .  .  Their  Plantations  would  produce  more 
of  everything  than  their  mouths  could  devour  or  than  they  could  find 
markets  to  vend  them  at."  Daniel  Defoe,  A  Plan  of  English  Commerce. 


42  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

as  well,  to  handicap  the  foreign  sugar  islands  by  compelling 
them  to  provide  themselves  with  the  food,  lumber,  and  live 
stock  which  the  English  tropical  colonies  obtained  from  the 
continent,  this,  too,  they  well  understood.  Nor,  while  the 
continental  colonies  were  weak  and  the  surplus  available  for 
export  was  small,  were  the  Navigation  Acts  needed  to  pre 
vent  the  colonists  from  seeking  a  market  elsewhere.  The 
logic  of  the  situation  and  the  obvious  advantages  which 
colonial  ships  possessed  for  carrying  the  sugar  and  tobacco 
to  England  were  sufficient  to  prevent  any  very  considerable 
breach  of  the  spirit  of  the  acts,  however  zealously  the  colonial 
captains  labored  to  evade  paying  the  customs  dues. 

But  as  the  eighteenth  century  progressed,  the  productive 
capacity  of  the  colonies  grew  proportionately  faster  than  did 
the  needs  of  the  English  West  India  colonies.  Probably  not 
later  than  1700,  the  English  West  India  markets  were  over 
stocked  with  colonial  goods  at  times  when  the  French,  Dutch, 
and  Spanish  islands  were  ready  to  pay  high  prices  for  the 
same  commodities.  Inevitably,  the  colonial  captains  threw 
the  statutes  to  the  winds  and  sought  the  better  market.  The 
easy  sale  and  the  large  profits,  the  willingness  of  officials 
and  ship-masters  to  overlook  statutes  and  regulations,  and 
the  lack  of  any  coercive  force  to  compel  obedience  resulted 
promptly  in  the  development  of  a  brisk  and  regular  smug 
gling  trade  between  the  foreign  sugar  islands  and  the  colonial 
merchants.  Fraudulent  clearance  papers,  and  the  posses 
sion  of  several  sets  of  false  certificates  by  most  ship-captains 
lent  a  specious  legality  to  these  practices,  and  colonial  ships 
were  soon  doing  business  with  Hamburg  and  Middleburg  as 
well  as  London.  The  illicit  business  grew  indeed  at  such 
a  rate  that  by  the  time  of  the  Revolution  apparently  trust 
worthy  authorities  stated  the  volume  of  trade  between  Ham 
burg,  Holland,  and  New  York  at  a  quarter  of  a  million 
pounds.5  While  such  statistics  are  probably  inaccurate, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  direct  trade  with  Europe  was 

BH.  B.  Dawson,  "Kew  York  City  During  the  Revolution,  38,  and  the 
statistics  and  authorities  there  quoted. 


THE  ECONOMIC  GROWTH  OF  THE  COLONIES  43 

very  large  and  that  these  figures  represent  the  belief  of 
both  English  and  colonial  merchants  as  to  its  extent  and 
value.  To  the  colonist,  it  was  the  sum  of  which  the  English 
government  meant  to  rob  him  in  order  to  put  it  into  the 
pockets  of  Englishmen;  to  the  London  merchants,  it  repre 
sented  the  sum  of  which  they  had  already  been  robbed. 

This  economic  interest,  however,  was  not  in  any  sense  of 
the  word  national,  nor  did  it  constitute  any  positive  bond  of 
union  between  the  colonies.  In  fact,  individuals  and  not 
entities  were  affected;  and  not  by  any  means  all  individuals. 
The  growth  of  wealth,  like  that  of  population,  had  not  been 
evenly  spread  throughout  the  colonies  or  even  throughout 
any  single  colony.  Those  towns  which  lay  even  a  short  dis 
tance  from  the  sea  or  from  some  river  remained,  like  Brain- 
tree,  Massachusetts,  nearly  static  in  population  and  wealth, 
dependent  largely  for  what  they  possessed  on  the  work  of 
their  own  people.  Vast  and  noticeable  as  was  the  increase 
in  general  wealth,  individual  merchants  and  planters,  indi 
vidual  towns,  and  even  colonies  possessed  more  than  a  pro 
portionate  share.  The  handsome  mansions  around  Boston 
and  along  the  Chesapeake,  the  imported  clothes  and  conven 
iences  of  certain  individuals  soon  marked  them  as  a  class 
apart  from  the  rest  in  the  city  or  town.  With  ready  money 
to  lend,  with  goods  to  sell,  with  positions  to  fill,  they  soon 
became  the  creditors  of  many  in  the  same  community  who 
were  not  so  well  off.  The  rich  were,  in  sooth,  not  as  wealthy, 
nor  the  poor  as  destitute  as  those  classes  in  Europe;  the 
actual  distance  between  them  was  slight,  but  it  was  unmis 
takably  there,  and  must  never  be  forgotten  by  one  who  hopes 
to  understand  the  history  of  the  Revolution.  The  merchant 
was  the  only  purchaser  of  colonial  produce,  and  the  only 
importer  of  the  coveted  English  goods.  His  profits  as  mid 
dleman,  then  as  now,  were  grudgingly  paid,  and  the  fact 
forgotten  that  the  great  profits  on  a  successful  voyage  were 
balanced  by  equally  heavy  losses  when  a  cargo  of  grain 
spoiled,  the  ship  was  wrecked,  or  was  captured  by  pirates  or 
privateers.  Unquestionably,  there  had  grown  up  in  the 


44  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

colonies  a  hatred  of  the  creditor  class  by  the  debtor  class. 
Similarly,  the  inland  towns  and  hamlets,  the  "frontier," 
were  usually  heavily  in  debt  to  the  coast  towns  for  salt,  seeds, 
tools,  and  numerous  commodities  they  had  grown  accustomed 
to  but  could  not  make.  So  we  find  a  distinct  feeling  of  hos 
tility  nourished  by  the  farmers  in  the  Berkshires  against  the 
Boston  merchants;  by  the  farmers  in  the  Blue  Ridge  against 
the  coast  towns  in  Pennsylvania  and  Virginia;  and  the  be 
ginning  of  the  present  antipathy  between  the  counties  and 
the ' city  of  New  York.  In  these  "debtor"  districts,  really 
primitive  conditions  existed,  and  the  people,  shivering  in 
homespun  around  the  great  fire  in  the  log  cabins,  supposed 
that  the  merchants  and  planters  must  be  extremely  comfort 
able,  clad  in  broadcloth  and  ensconced  in  a  plastered  house, 
decorated  with  the  expensive  "china  paper."  That  the  lat 
ter  were  also  exceedingly  uncomfortable,  the  farmers  did  not 
know  and  would  not  have  believed  had  they  been  told.  The 
creation  of  these  great  creditor  and  debtor  classes  was  one 
of  the  chief  results  of  the  character  of  colonial  growth. 
Their  existence  is  one  of  the  cardinal  facts  needed  for  a  com 
prehension  of  the  Revolution;  for  that  war  was  fought  quite 
as  much  between  two  parties  in  America  as  between  England 
and  the  colonies,  and  the  Loyalist  and  Patriot  parties  coin 
cided  far  more  closely  with  the  lines  of  creditor  and  debtor 
than  has  generally  been  supposed.  The  Civil  War  was  not 
over  in  1781;  it  continued  during  the  Critical  Period;  the 
adoption  of  the  Constitution  marked  the  victory  of  the  credi 
tor  party,  which  was  promptly  crushed  in  1800  by  the  debtors 
enrolled  as  Anti-Federalists.  Indeed,  the  fact  that  the  East 
has  been  normally  the  creditor  of  the  West  has  been  one  of 
the  fundamental  facts  in  our  history  and  is  the  explanation 
of  most  of  our  economic  phenomena.  Colonial  growth  not 
only  provided  economic  interests  sufficiently  powerful  to 
cause  the  breach  with  England,  but  it  resulted  in  the  crea 
tion  of  the  two  economic  interests  which  have  been  dominant 
in  this  country  ever  since,  those  of  the  settled  country  and 
of  the  frontier. 


THE  OKIGIN  OF  AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY 

PROVIDENTIALLY,  the  English  settlers  began  their  new  life  so 
far  from  home  that  active  assistance  or  interference  from 
England  in  local  government  was  out  of  the  question. 
American  democracy  originated  in  necessity:  the  settlers 
did  their  own  work  because  there  was  no  one  else  who  could 
by  any  possibility  do  it.  By  1775,  they  had  governed  them 
selves  so  long  in  every  particular  and  with  such  complete 
success  that  the  breach  with  England  caused  and  involved 
absolutely  no  administrative  difficulties  or  changes.  The 
fact  that  the  colonists  had  governed  themselves  was  conclu 
sive  proof  that  they  were  not  dependent  upon  the  mother- 
country,  that  merely  formal  and  superficial  obstacles  stood 
in  the  way  of  complete  independence.  In  this  we  find  a 
second  fundamental  cause  of  the  Revolution,  scarcely  less 
significant  than  the  economic  strength  of  America. 

The  width  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  the  fact  that  a  very  few 
thousand  people  were  scattered  in  tiny  groups  over  a  thou 
sand  miles  of  sea-coast,  the  absolute  lack  of  kings,  feudal 
barons,  or  administrative  organs  of  any  sort  created  by  past 
generations  to  perform  the  community's  work  for  it, — these 
were  the  primary  causes  of  the  origin  of  American  democ 
racy.  Nor  need  we  look  further  than  the  exigencies  and 
circumstances  of  the  moment  for  an  explanation  of  its  early 
character.  There  seems  to  have  been  no  conscious  choice  be 
tween  alternative  forms  or  models,  no  consideration  of 
theories.  Naturally,  emigrants  did  not  forget  such  habits 
and  traditions  of  local  government  as  they  brought  with  them, 
but  the  needs  of  the  moment  rather  than  theory  and  precedent 
shaped  the  Virginia  parish  and  the  New  England  town.  It 

45 


46  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

is  only  too  evident  from  the  records  that  the  first  govern 
ments  grew  into  being  rather  than  were  consciously  created. 
The  circumstances  of  settlement,  permitting  no  great  ex 
tremes  of  wealth  or  poverty,  of  education  or  ignorance,  natu 
rally  provided  the  very  conditions  best  adapted  for  democ 
racy.  Indeed,  any  other  form  of  government  would  have 
been  an  anomaly,  and  the  various  schemes,  worthy  and  un 
worthy,  concocted  by  capitalists  and  theorists,  from  the  com 
plicated  system  of  councils  proposed  by  Sir  Thomas  Smith 
to  the  elaborate  dreams  of  John  Locke  and  the  constitutional 
experiments  of  William  Penn,  one  and  all  promptly  and  in- 
gloriously  failed.  The  conditions  were  right  for  democ 
racy  and  were  therefore  wrong  for  feudal  palatinates  and 
aristocratic  lordships.  No  one  tried  to  plant  democratic 
governments;  nothing  else  could  be  made  to  grow. 

The  beginnings  of  self-government  in  the  town  of  Dedham, 
Massachusetts,  furnish  a  most  interesting  example  of  this 
•''  natural  evolution.  The  settlers  brought  with  them  the  tradi- 
/  tions  of  the  medieval  parish  and  of  the  close  town-corpora 
tion  of  Elizabeth's  time,  with  a  full  panoply  of  ideas  about 
nobles  and  kings,  and  little  or  no  actual  experience  in  govern 
ment.  The  strongest  influence  was  that  of  the  "  Church 
covenant,"  then  in  vogue  amongst  the  Puritans  and  Separa 
tists,  an  agreement  to  abide  by  the  common  decision  which 
did  hold  the  seed  of  democratic  self-government,  but  which 
certainly  was  not  intended  to  sanction  anything  we  should 
recognize  as  democracy  or  administration.  This  was  the  only 
precedent  they  seem  to  have  found  useful.  In  1636,  twenty- 
two  "proprietors"  signed  a  simple  "covenant"  or  agreement 
to  abide  individually  by  the  decision  of  the  majority,  and 
the  community  then  continued  for  some  weeks  to  exercise  its 
sovereignty  by  performing  the  work  of  the  miniature  State 
with  its  own  hands.1  It  gave  neither  itself  nor  its  members 
titles  nor  powers;  it  discussed  neither  laws  nor  theories,  and 
formally  recognized  no  necessary  governmental  relationship 

i  The  Records  of  the  Town  of  Dedham  have  been  published  and  this 
information  is  drawn  from  them. 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  47 

with  any  other  body  of  men  in  the  world.  The  "executive" 
business  consisted  of  allotting  lands;  and  the  first  ordinance 
was  thus  recorded:  "Ordered  that  the  next  Fair  day  every 
man  of  our  society  shall  meet  at  the  footway  and  assist  to 
mend  the  same,  and  soe  many  as  can  bring  whelbarrowes. ' ' 
The  sovereign  was  at  one  and  the  same  time  executive,  legis 
lature,  and  judiciary,  but  found  spades  and  wheelbarrows 
more  useful  than  the  pen  and  the  gavel.  The  only  office 
created  during  the  first  four  years  was  that  of  collecting  the 
fines  due  from  those  who  came  late  to  the  town-meeting,  after 
the  beating  of  the  town  drum. 

On  May  17,  1639,  the  town  adopted  its  first  "constitution," 
and  there  is  no  good  reason  to  suppose  that  Winthrop  at  Bos 
ton  was  consulted.  They  acted  of  their  own  grace  and  mo 
tion  and  recognized  no  authority  as  higher  than  their  own. 
"Whereas  it  hath  been  found  by  long  experience  that  the 
general  meeting  of  soe  many  men  in  one  meeting  of  the  com 
mon  affayres  thereof,  have  waisted  much  tyme  to  noe  small 
damage,  and  business  is  thereby  nothing  furthered:  it  is 
therefore  nowe  agreed  by  generall  consent,  that  these  7  men 
heerunder  named  we  doe  make  choice  of  and  give  them  full 
power  to  contrive,  execute,  &  performe  all  the  business  and 
affayres  of  this  our  wholl  towne. ' '  The  sovereign  delegated 
the  whole  of  its  authority  for  the  space  of  one  year.  Surely 
no  such  "constitution"  was  ever  thought  of  in  England  nor 
ever  would  have  been  by  these  same  men  had  they  stayed  in 
England.  Nor  would  they  have  thus  tacitly  assumed  their 
complete  legal  independence  of  all  other  authority,  had  not 
the  miles  of  wilderness  between  them  and  the  Governor  at 
Boston  compelled  them  to  act  on  their  own  initiative.  The 
conditions  of  the  new  world  fairly  thrust  the  scepter  into 
their  hands.  It  is  perfectly  clear  that  the  annual  town- 
meeting  resumed  all  authority  at  the  close  of  each  year,  and 
instead  of  electing  new  incumbents  to  these  offices,  literally 
created  the  offices  over  again.  In  1640,  a  town-clerk  and 
surveyors  of  highways  were  elected;  and  the  selectmen  ap 
pointed  the  first  administrative  officials, — fence-viewers, 


48  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

wood-reeves  and  hog-reeves.  The  title,  ' '  selectmen, ' '  does  not 
appear  in  the  records  until  1648. 

No  doubt  the  close  organization  of  the  New  England  town 
was  largely  influenced  by  the  severity  of  the  climate.  The 
long  winters  forced  the  people  to  cling  together,  not  only  for 
sociability,  but  for  the  juster  and  easier  distribution  of  the 
scanty  store  of  food  and  fuel.  Then  too  the  proximity  of  the 
Indians  made  scattered  settlement  dangerous.  Nor  was  there 
much  temptation  to  stray  far  from  the  town.  No  agriculture 
was  profitable  in  the  North  until  much  labor  had  been  ex 
pended  in  clearing  the  land  and  most  men  were  unwilling  to 
put  so  much  time  into  a  few  acres  which  were  not  favorably 
situated  for  trade  and  intercourse.  The  land  around  the 
town  seemed  in  most  cases  as  likely  to  be  fertile  as  that  fur 
ther  away,  and  the  difficulties  of  clearing  and  cultivation 
made  comparatively  few  acres  all  one  family  could  really  use. 

In  the  South,  the  conditions  exacted  by  the  tobacco-culture 
created,  aided  by  the  traditions  of  English  county  and  parish 
government,  a  very  different  type  of  local  organization.  The 
culture  of  tobacco  consisted  in  sowing  the  seed  in  small  beds, 
in  transplanting  the  young  plants  into  the  earth  loosened 
with  a  hoe  between  the  stumps  in  a  clearing,  in  hoeing  them 
regularly,  and  in  pinching  off  the  shoots  and  tops  which 
developed  the  stalk  at  the  expense  of  the  leaves.  The  heat 
of  the  sun,  the  arduous  and  continuous  toil,  the  simplicity  of 
the  work  made  profitable  the  employment  of  forced  or  slave 
labor.  The  mild  winters,  which  left  the  ground  open  to 
cultivation  nearly  if  not  all  the  year  round,  and  the  necessity 
of  constantly  clearing  new  fields  to  take  the  place  of  those 
which  could  not  be  artificially  fertilized,  all  tended  to  make 
the  work  of  the  plantation  continuous  and  to  tempt  the  set 
tlers  to  draw  further  and  further  apart  in  their  eagerness 
to  increase  the  size  of  their  individual  holdings.  Here  were 
conditions  as  different  as  could  well  be  conceived  from  those 
in  New  England  but  which  no  less  powerfully  worked  for 
the  growth  of  self-government.  Obviously,  the  owner,  of  a 
plantation,  living  with  a  couple  of  overseers  and  from  a  dozen 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  49 

to  a  couple  of  hundred  forced  laborers  or  slaves,  on  a  tract 
some  thousands  of  acres  in  size,  miles  from  his  nearest  neigh 
bor,  needed  desperately  authority  of  a  peculiarly  broad  type. 
But  in  the  nature  of  things  there  was  no  one  to  whom  this 
authority  could  be  delegated  or  who  could  effectively  use  it 
save  the  planter  himself.  Where  all  citizens  were  in  such  a 
position,  local  government  was  necessarily  less  concerned 
with  the  regulation  of  the  behavior  of  citizens  than  it  was 
with  that  of  their  servants  or  slaves.  Misbehavior  and  crime 
committed  by  the  slave  or  indented  servant  had  to  be  punished 
by  the  master  as  the  only  possible  delegate  of  the  com 
munity's  authority,  and  his  right  to  decide  what  was  or  was 
not  to  be  punished  and  what  penalty  ought  to  be  inflicted  had 
to  be  made  as  absolute  as  the  imperative  necessity  of  prevent 
ing  insubordination  and  revolt  among  the  laborers.  Elabo 
rate  local  government  was  not  needed  for  there  was  prac 
tically  no  community  life;  nor,  while  the  plantation  system 
lasted,  was  there  likely  to  be  a  community  life  whose  needs 
could  not  be  met  by  the  simplest  possible  arrangements. 
Legislation  dealt  chiefly  with  the  relation  of  employer  and 
employee,  of  master  and  slave ;  the  difficulties  between  masters 
were  few.  The  whole  business  of  the  county  was  little  more 
than  the  collection  of  the  quitrents  due  the  Crown,  the  re 
cording  of  land  titles,  and  the  trying  of  the  few  law  cases 
arising  between  planter  and  planter,  and  could  be  transacted 
to  general  satisfaction  by  at  most  three  officials,  whose  com 
bined  powers  were  not  infrequently  vested  in  the  same  in 
dividual. 

Such  conditions  naturally  induced  the  belief  that  govern 
ment  ought  to  interfere  with  the  individual  as  little  as  pos 
sible;  that  its  sphere  of  usefulness  was  so  limited  that  the 
less  it  did,  the  better, — a  view  based  upon  the  undeniable 
fact  that  in  Virginia,  in  Maryland,  and  in  most  places  where 
an  agricultural  population  was  widely  scattered  over  a  great 
area  of  land,  there  were  very  few  things  which  the  individual 
imperatively  needed,  which  he  could  not  do  for  himself  more 
promptly  and  efficiently  than  the  community  could  possibly 


50  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

do  them  for  him.  In  fact,  the  need  for  cooperation  was 
slight,  and  the  advantages  were  obvious  of  complete  control 
over  the  laborers  without  too  much  investigation  by  others  as 
to  the  justice  of  the  planter's  administration  of  the  laws. 
Amid  such  surroundings,  grew  up  the  men  whose  descend 
ants  believed  so  firmly  in  loose  construction,  in  Jeffersonian 
democracy,  and  in  States'  rights.  Under  utterly  different 
conditions,  which  made  cooperation  as  valuable  to  the  New 
Englander  as  individual  discretion  was  to  his  Virginian 
cousin,  grew  up  the  men  whose  descendants  believed  as  firmly 
in  the  benefits  of  a  strong  centralized  administration,  in  Fed 
eralism,  and  in  National  government. 

While  apparently  a  less  natural  evolution  than  the  local 
governments,  the  State  governments  were  as  little  the  result 
of  design  and  as  much  the  creatures  of  conditions.  Many  of 
the  first  settlers  came  to  the  new  land  as  employees  of  an 
individual  or  of  a  trading-company  and  the  royal  charter  dele 
gated  to  the  grantee  certain  powers  over  them.  That  any 
thing  more  elaborate  would  be  needed  than  some  method  for 
deciding  simple  civil  and  criminal  cases  was  not  anticipated. 
A  handful  of  men  in  a  wilderness  would  hardly  need  special 
legislation  or  complicated  organs  of  administration.  Even 
the  most  intricate  schemes  of  the  idealists  provided  no  sepa 
ration  of  functions  and  usually  delegated  authority  and  com 
plete  discretion  from  one  body  of  men  to  another.  The  re 
sponsibility  was  to  be  shared  rather  than  the  actual  work  of 
administration.  Self-government  by  men  whose  very  pres 
ence  in  the  new  land  betokened  their  economic  dependence 
on  some  one  else  was  not  even  thought  of  as  a  possibility.  An 
adventurer,  like  Mbrton  of  Merrymount,  "governed"  the 
laborers  he  had  hired,  and  left  to  his  partners  the  "govern 
ment"  of  their  laborers.  The  Virginia  Company  delegated 
part  of  their  governmental  authority  to  a  council  in  the 
colony;  the  merchants  who  financed  the  Pilgrims  gave  them 
authority  over  the  laborers  sent  with  them;  while  Winthrop 
and  the  few  members  of  the  joint-stock  company  which  be 
gan  the  colony  at  Boston,  expected  to  exercise  and  certainly 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  51 

did  for  some  years  exert  all  the  authority  there  was.  In 
most  colonies,  something  like  autocratic  or  military  rule  was 
the  actual  government  of  the  state  for  a  lengthy  period. 
Smith  at  Jamestown  and  Dale  after  him  practically  put  the 
colony  under  martial  law;  the  Dutch  governors  in  New 
Netherlands  were  forced  to  do  the  same;  and  in  all  the  col 
onies,  even  in  Massachusetts,  the  real  control  remained  in  the 
hands  of  a  few  men  until  well  toward  the  close  of  the  seven 
teenth  century. 

At  the  same  time,  practically  without  an  exception,  the 
autocrat  was  compelled  to  share  his  power  with  the  settlers 
on  a  basis  which  was  far  removed  from  the  sort  of  govern 
ment  intended  by  the  King  who  granted  the  charter.  Indeed, 
most  colonial  charters  were  little  more  than  the  record  of 
English  ignorance  of  American  conditions,  and  scarcely  one 
of  them  had  after  half  a  century  more  than  a  nominal  rela 
tion  to  the  form  of  government  actually  in  operation  under 
it.  It  is,  indeed,  hardly  accurate  to  speak  of  state  or  colonial 
government  as  distinguished  from  local  government  before 
1660.  Outside  of  New  England,  the  settlers  were  either  so 
few  or  so  scattered  that  the  whole  colony  was  in  practice 
simply  the  one  large  town,  which  governed  the  whole  geo 
graphical  entity,  so  far  as  it  was  governed  at  all,  with  some 
spasmodic  assistance  or  interference  from  the  nearest  settlers. 
Indeed,  the  trouble  and  expense  of  sharing  in  the  govern 
ment  of  the  colony,  the  obvious  preference  of  each  individual 
for  spending  his  whole  time  in  the  promotion  of  his  own 
economic  welfare,  the  pressure  of  necessity  which  forced  him 
to  solve  for  himself  the  more  formidable  difficulties,  left  the 
majority  of  the  settlers  long  indifferent  to  the  form  or  policy 
of  the  nominal  unit  to  which  they  belonged.  The  growth  of 
the  community  and  that  alone  forced  upon  a  reluctant  people 
State  government. 

In  every  colony,  however,  there  grew  into  being  during 
the  seventeenth  century  some  sort  of  a  representative  as 
sembly  into  whose  hands  fell  eventually  the  direction  of  the 
government.  The  most  rapid  growth  was  attained  in  Massa- 


52  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

chusetts,  where  alone  existed  before  1640  enough  towns  near 
enough  to  each  other  to  make  possible  some  intercourse  and 
to  render  advantageous  some  share  in  the  direction  of  the 
common  affairs.     The  Charter  was  not  meant  to  provide  for  a 
government  in  the  colony  but  it  did  not  forbid  it.     It  did  not 
provide  for  representative  government  at  all:  it  directed  the 
election  by  the  freemen  in  person  (and  it  was  assumed  they 
would  remain  in  England),  of  the  usual  officers  of  a  joint- 
stock  company,  called  then  the  Governor  and' Assistants  (the 
modern  President  and  Directors),  who  were  to  exercise  the 
entire  authority  vested  in  the  company,  subject  only  to  the 
approval  of  the  stockholders  at  the  meeting  of  the  General 
Court.     By-laws  could  of  course  be  passed;  the  officials  in 
America  would  of  course  enforce  the  English  civil  and  crim 
inal  law,  and  make  such  arrangements  as  the  exigencies  of 
the  occasion  might  dictate.     Winthrop,  Dudley,  and  the  few 
stockholders  who  came  to  America  accordingly  voted  them 
selves,  before  landing,  the  extensive  judicial  and  administra^ 
tive   powers   of   an   English   justice-of-the-peace.     Some    op 
position  promptly  became  apparent;  their  interpretations  of 
the  English  civil  and  criminal  code  and  their  levy  of  taxes 
were  questioned,  but  "Winthrop's  coolness  and  the  ability  and 
essential  fairness  of  his  administration  silenced  the  objectors. 
He  and  his  associates  were  forced,  however,  to  admit  to  mem 
bership  in  the  trading-company  some  hundred  men  who  ap 
plied  for  admission  in  1631.     Their  rights  to  a  definite  share 
in  the  economic  advantages  possessed  by  the  company  could 
not  be  denied  and  the  certainty  that  they  could  easily  obtain 
title  to  lands  and  goods  in  some  other  part  of  New  England 
counseled  acquiescence.     But  Winthrop  and  his  friends  for 
bore  to  mention  to  the  new  freemen  that  the  Charter  invested 
them  with  broad  powers  of  administration,  and   continued 
therefore  for  three  years  longer  to  admit  new  freemen  from 
time  to  time  and  to  exercise  such  legislative,  executive,  and 
judicial  functions  as  they  deemed  advisable. 

Meanwhile,  local  governments  m  the  various  towns  around 
Boston  sprang  into  vigorous  life  and  their  propinquity  to 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  53 

each  other  resulted  in  an  organized  movement  among  the  resi 
dent  freemen  for  a  share  in  the  government  of  the  stock  com 
pany.  Executive  orders  and  demands  for  taxes  had  come 
from  Boston  to  these  new  sovereign  communities,  and  ex 
cited  in  their  members  some  wonder  as  to  the  authority  Win- 
throp  possessed.  Finally,  a  committee  of  investigation  ap 
peared  in  Boston  in  1634  and  demanded  sight  of  the  Charter, 
which  had  up  to  this  time  been  sedulously  kept  secret.  One 
reading  opened  their  eyes.  The  freemen,  thus  apprised  that 
they  possessed  a  voice  in  the  common  affairs  equal  to  that  of 
the  Governor  and  Assistants  and  the  right  to  elect  those  of 
ficials  yearly  (who  had  hitherto  elected  themselves  to  office), 
proceeded  immediately  to  avail  themselves  of  all  their  privi 
leges,  and  from  that  moment  began  the  transformation  of 
the  trading-company  into  democratic  representative  state 
government.  The  continued  use  of  names  and  forms,  the 
claim  that  the  Charter  authorized  these  proceedings  need  not 
blind  us  to  the  fact  that  the  General  Court  from  the  first 
transacted  business  never  before  performed  by  commercial 
companies  (whose  governing  heads  were  normally  resident 
in  England)  and  by  methods  which  Charles  I  certainly  never 
contemplated  when  he  approved  the  docquet  of  the  Charter. 
At  the  same  time,  the  language  of  the  Charter  was  so  broad 
that  few  things  were  done  which  could  not  be  read  into  its  in 
clusive  phrases. 

The  direct  exercise  in  person  of  authority  at  quarterly  meet 
ings  in  the  performance  of  a  routine  business  yearly  growing 
in  volume  soon  became  a  burden  on  men  whose  individual  af 
fairs  necessarily  claimed  constant  attention  and  unremitting 
toil.  Various  expedients  were  tried  for  securing  the  exer 
cise  of  the  freeman's  authority  without  his  presence  in  Boston 
and  yet  without  forcing  him  to  forego  the  careful  considera 
tion  of  the  matter  in  hand  for  which  his  vote  stood.  The  use 
of  proxies  merely  allowed  the  men  who  did  go  to  vote  all 
the  proxies  on  new  business  as  they  saw  fit  and  thus  really  de 
prived  their  friends  of  their  votes.  The  freemen  then  tried 
balloting  for  officers  in  their  home  towns  and  sent  the 


64  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

"papers"  to  Boston;  but  as  this  compelled  them  to  vote  in 
the 'dark  and  caused  many  votes  to  be  wasted,  the  expedient 
was  adopted  of  holding  what  we  should  call  a  caucus  at  the 
end  of  the  session  of  the  General  Court,  at  which  the  freemen 
present  prepared  what  we  should  call  a  " slate"  to  be  sub 
mitted  to  all  the  freemen  in  all  the  towns.  The  freemen  soon 
fell  into  the  habit  of  designating  the  man  to  go  up  to  Boston 
to  perform  these  important  functions  in  behalf  of  the  rest. 
Soon,  they  saw  the  obvious  advantage  of  investing  him  with 
full  authority  to  act  for  them  as  his  judgment  dictated  in  all 
matters  of  common  interest.  They  could  not  go  in  person, 
and,  unless  they  were  to  sacrifice  their  power  altogether,  they 
must  delegate  it.  Thus,  the  pressure  of  circumstances  created 
in  Massachusetts  out  of  the  nominal  machinery  of  a  trading- 
company  a  representative  assembly,  an  upper  house,  and 
an  executive  of  limited  powers.  Moreover,  the  fact  that  there 
were  freemen  in  every  town  soon  changed  the  emphasis  of 
representation;  the  first  deputies  were  the  representatives  of 
the  freemen  only,  but  their  constituents  soon  came  to  act  as  a 
town  rather  than  as  freemen,  and  the  assembly  soon  actually 
represented  the  proportional  strength  of  the  various  local 
entities  in  that  geographical  district  originally  granted  to 
the  trading-company.  Thus  was  an  articulated  state  created 
utterly  unlike  anything  in  existence  in  Europe. 

The  emigrants  from  Massachusetts,  who  founded  the  other 
New  England  colonies,  erected  everywhere  the  sort  of  govern 
ment  already  developed  in  Massachusetts.  In  fact,  the  fa 
mous  "written  constitution"  adopted  in  Connecticut  in  1639 
was  nothing  but  the  description  of  the  forms  in  use  in  the 
Bay  Colony.  In  Virginia  some  twenty  years  earlier,  in  1619, 
the  Governor  had  summoned  an  assembly  which  was  the  first 
truly  representative  body  in  America;  but  the  loss  of  the 
Charter  in  1624,  the  broad  powers  vested  in  the  new  royal 
governor,  the  difficulty  of  cooperation  on  the  part  of  people 
so  widely  scattered  and  the  efficiency'  of  the  county  govern 
ment  made  representative  institutions  weak  till  into  the  eight 
eenth  century.  Bacon's  Rebellion  in  1676  was  an  unsuccess- 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  55 

ful  protest  against  the  autocratic  rule  of  Berkeley.  In  Mary 
land  and  the  Carolinas,  where  quasi-feudal  potver  was  vested 
in  the  proprietors,  similar  pressure  of  circumstances  pre 
vented  them  from  exercising  it  and  forced  them  to  share  it 
wjth  the  colonists.  In  Pennsylvania,  Penn  was  most  anxious 
to  establish  representative  institutions,  and,  after  some  dis 
pute  and  difficulty,  came  to  an  agreement  with  the  people. 
After  1689  ensued  three-quarters  of  a  century  of  rapid  de 
velopment  in  self-government,  which  is  in  some  respects  the 
most  important  fact  in  colonial  history,  for  the  colonists 
learned  how  to  govern  themselves  in  state  as  well  as  in  local 
affairs.  So  thoroughly  did  the  Atlantic  Ocean  and  the  wilder 
ness  do  their  work,  that  the  Declaration  of  Independence  was 
in  very  truth  merely  the  statement  of  an  existing  political 
and  constitutional  fact. 

Nor  was  this  all.  The  uniformly  primitive  conditions  had 
everywhere  developed  institutions  in  an  essentially  similar 
manner.  Differences  there  were,  by  no  means  unimportant, 
but  on  the  whole  the  similarity  was  so  great  that  all  the 
Americans  thoroughly  understood  one  another's  methods  of 
procedure  and  action.  There  was  no  fundamental  constitu 
tional  or  political  obstacle  in  the  way  of  the  formation  of  a 
single  nation  out  of  the  English  colonies.  "I  find,"  wrote, 
John  Adams  to  his  wife,  "  although  the  colonies  have  differed 
in  religion,  laws,  customs,  and  manners,  yet  in  the  great  es 
sentials  of  society  and  government,  they  are  all  alike." 
Simple,  axiomatic,  obvious  as  this  vital  fact  seems  to  the 
modern  American,  its  transcendent  importance  can  hardly 
be  over-emphasized.  The  possibility  of  political  union  was  a 
direct  result  of  the  constitutional  development  of  the  colonial 
period.  From  this  political  experience  came  the  precedent 
for  the  Constitution  and  as  well  for  those  two  notions  of  the 
proper  function  of  a  central  government  which,  under  the 
names,  broad  and  narrow  construction,  have  been  such 
permanent  bonds  of  political  association  ever  since. 

In  the  working  of  colonial  governments,  too,  we  meet  from 
the  very  first  with  a  good  many  of  those  traits  which  have 


56  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

lately,  received  so  much  notice  and  vilification.  Not  only  have 
most  people  assumed  that  our  colonial  ancestors  discovered 
the  true  frame  and  form  of  democracy  which  later  genera 
tions  in  their  wickedness  perverted  to  strange  uses,  but  they 
have  steadfastly  believed  that  the  conduct  of  our  ancestors 
was  impeccable.  The  evidence  is  overwhelming  in  amount 
and  conclusive  in  character  to  show  that  the  evils  as  well  as 
the  virtues  of  American  democracy  are  a  legacy  from  the 
colonial  period.  One  of  the  earliest  Massachusetts  elections 
was  held  in  Cambridge  instead  of  in  Boston  as  usual,  in  order 
to  increase  the  attendance  of  Winthrop's  supporters  who 
lived  in  the  adjacent  smaller  towns  and  to  put  the  formidable 
obstacle  of  several  hours'  journey  in  the  way  of  the  attend 
ance  of  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  Boston  friends.  The  latter,  when 
they  realized  the  success  of  Winthrop's  manoeuver,  tried  ob 
struction  and  filibustering  in  hope  of  using  up  the  time  and 
preventing  the  Court  from  reaching  the  election  at  all. 
For  many  decades,  black  and  white  beans  were  used  in  many 
colonies  at  the  polls,  and  it  was  a  common  practice  for  a 
man  to  carry  a  few  up  his  sleeve,  which  he  slid  into  the  box 
when  he  inserted  his  hand  to  vote.  Repeating  was  com 
mon.  John  Adams  calmly  recorded  in  his  diary  the  defeat 
of  a  friend  at  the  polls  because,  after  voting  for  "the  first 
time,"  the  candidate's  friends  went  over  to  the  tavern  and 
when  they  returned  to  vote  again  found  the  polls  closed! 
The  Governor  of  Rhode  Island  publicly  complained  more 
than  once  that  the  assembly  of  that  colony  was  un- 
blushingly  for  sale.  In  Boston  and  most  surrounding  towns, 
the  real  government  was  in  the  hands  of  a  "ring"  of  poli 
ticians  of  the  ultra-modern  type.  John  Adams  wrote  in  his 
diary  for  February  1773,  of  "the  Caucus  Club"  which  met 
in  a  certain  garret,  where  they  put  "questions  to  the  vote 
regularly,  and  selectmen,  assessors,  collectors,  wardens,  fore- 
wards,  and  representatives  are  regularly  chosen  before  they 
are  chosen  in  the  town." 

If  the  political  development  of  the  colonies  had  made  them 
decade  by  decade  more  alike,  it  had  steadfastly  carried  them 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  57 

in  another  direction  from  that  which  English  constitutional 
development  had  taken.  In  1760,  the  Americans  understood 
each  other ;  they  did  not  understand  the  political  phrases  used 
in  England  nor  did  the  English  understand  those  common  in 
America.  The  pressure  put  upon  the  Americans  by  the  wil 
derness  vitally  to  alter  the  habits  of  action  they  brought 
from  Europe  is  not  more  difficult  to  appreciate  than  the 
changes  in  England  resulting  from  the  Eevolutions  of  1640 
and  1689.  In  America,  democracy  both  in  town,  county,  and 
State,  had  been  actually  created;  in  England,  had  risen  the 
House  of  Commons  and  Cabinet  government.  Between  such 
divergent  ideas  a  breach  was  inevitable.  Yet  American  and 
Englishman  saw  in  his  own  ideas  fundamental  notions  in 
vested  with  peculiar  sanctity  by  a  century  and  more  of  tradi 
tion;  and  both  were  right.  The  fathers  and  grandfathers  of 
both  had  lived  and  died  espousing  the  notions  he  proclaimed 
in  1760 ;  both  were  honest,  both  were  sincere ;  each  misunder 
stood  the  other;  each  believed  the  other  was  trying  to  de 
ceive  him  and  was  wittingly  making  propositions  which  he 
knew  to  be  false.  Nothing  short  of  a  century  of  divergent 
constitutional  development  could  have  produced  a  breach  of 
such  magnitude  between  honest  men  and  a  difference  of 
opinion  too  fundamental  for  compromise,  explanation,  or 
apology.  Had  it  been  less  serious,  the  strong  peace  party  on 
both  sides  of  the  water  in  1775  might  have  successfully 
averted  war.  The  constitutional  development,  which  gave 
the  colonists  the  political  experience  indispensable  for  inde 
pendence,  also  resulted  in  the  divergent  constitutional  ideas 
which  caused  the  breach  with  the  mother-country.  In  a 
double  sense,  American  democracy  made  the  Revolution  pos 
sible.  In  a  very  real  sense,  it  is  the  rock  upon  which  this  na 
tion  is  built. 

These  same  decades  of  quiet  colonial  growth  and  develop 
ment  had  produced  and  trained  the  generation  of  men  who 
were  to  fight  and  win  independence  from  England.  His 
torians  have  long  unanimously  agreed  that  for  ability, 
probity,  learning,  and  unselfish  devotion  to  a  great  ideal,  the 


58  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

men  of  the  American  Revolution  and  of  the  constitutional 
period  will  bear  comparison  with  the  men  alive  during  any 
crisis  of  any  country's  history.  The  achievements  of  the 
colonial  period  were  really  stupendous.  The  successful  work 
in  coping  with  the  many  exigencies  and  needs  of  colonial  life 
was  the  only  thing  which  could  possibly  have  fitted  the  leaders 
to  meet  the  astonishing  difficulties  of  the  Revolution,  the 
Critical  Period,  and  the  organization  of  a  central  government. 
The  prosperity  of  the  colonists  alone  could  have  allowed 
them  to  accumulate  those  fortunes  which  permitted  them  to 
devote  their  lives  to  the  new  cause.  Washington  was  the 
richest  man  in  America;  Franklin,  John  Adams,  Jefferson, 
Madison,  the  Randolphs,  Hancock,  and  many  more  were  men 
of  independent  means.  It  is  hardly  possible  for  us  to  con 
ceive  what  their  adhesion  to  the  cause  in  1775  meant ;  it  com 
pletely  disproved  though  it  did  not  dispel  the  notion,  then 
widespread  in  England,  that  resistance  was  the  work  of  a 
rabble  who  had  nothing  to  lose.2 

George  Washington  was  born,  as  he  thought,  to  poverty, 
and  trained  himself  therefore  to  make  his  own  way  in  the 
world.  When  he  unexpectedly  inherited  a  great  fortune,  he 
was  therefore  singularly  fitted  to  make  the  best  use  of  it. 
To  years  of  hard  labor  and  outdoor  life,  he  owed  his  vigor 
ous  constitution  and  physical  endurance;  his  Indian  cam 
paigns  and  service  under  Braddock  made  him  the  only  man 
in  the  colonies  with  any  considerable  actual  experience  in 
military  matters  and  the  only  man  acquainted  with  the  effect 
upon  British  troops  of  the  conditions  under  which  a  war 
would  have  to  be  fought  here.  He  knew  from  experience  the 
hopelessness  of  conducting  a  wilderness  campaign  upon  the 

2  A  Committee  of  Congress,  appointed  to  report  on  the  conduct  of  the 
English  troops  in  America,  declared  in  April  1777,  that  the  British 
conducted  themselves  as  was  to  be  expected  towards  "a  people,  whom 
they  have  been  taught  to  look  upon,  not  as  freemen  defending  their 
rights  on  principle,  but  as  desperadoes  and  profligates,  who  have  risen 
up  against  law  and  order  in  general  and  wish  the  subversion  of  society 
itself.  .  .  .  The  same  deluding  principle  seems  to  govern  persons  and 
bodies  of  the  highest  rank  in  Britain."  Journals  of  the  Continental 
Congress,  Ford's  ed.,  VII,  279, 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  59 

European  model,  and  he  never  forgot  it.  The  final  victory  in 
the  war  we  owe  to  his  keen  use  of  the  topography  of  the 
country  to  create  an  impregnable  defense.  To  him  we  owe 
the  victory.  !  He  was  one  of  those  rare  men  who  loom  gigantic 
before  the  eyes  of  their  contemporaries.;  He  was  not  as  im 
peccable  in  little  things  as  he  has  been 'represented  to  be  by 
the  garrulous  Weems  and  a  century  of  school  text-books. 
He  was  fond  of  cards,  was  not  a  total  abstainer,  and,  though  a 
deeply  religious  man,  was  by  no  means  devout.  Possessed  of 
an  extraordinary  temper,  like  Henry  VIII  and  Oliver  Crom 
well,  he  had  it  under  that  same  extraordinary  control. 
Somehow  he  possessed  that  thing  rarer  than  genius,  more  in 
tangible  than  magnetism,  a  superlative  sanity  and  probity. 
He  gave  the  Revolution  a  watchword  unique  among  rally 
ing  cries:  "Let  us  raise  a  standard  to  which  the  wise  and 
honest  can  repair."  Scarcely  a  dozen  men  have  ever  pos 
sessed  in  all  history  the  confidence  of  a  great  body  of  men  to  the 
degree  he  did.  Their  willingness  to  follow  him  without  ask 
ing  explanations  or  expecting  comprehension  of  the  reasons 
is  one  of  the  decisive  factors  in  the  movements  of  the  time. 
His  personal  influence  kept  an  army  in  the  field  during  the 
war,  held  the  jarring  statesmen  together  till  the  Constitution 
was  formed,  and  then  set  the  new  government  on  its  feet. 
One  cannot  conceive  of  the  Revolution  without  him.  He  is 
in  the  truest  sense  the  father  of  the  present  nation.  Had 
colonial  America  never  developed  into  the  United  States,  it 
would  still  be  famous  in  history  because  it  had  produced  such 
a  man. 

No  sooner  had  the  first  tentative  movements  in  the  quarrel 
with  England  begun  than  the  need  of  a  foreign  ambassador  j, 
was  felt  who  possessed  sufficient  ability,  foresight,  and  infor 
mation  to  meet  the  statesmen  of  the  old  world  upon  their  own 
ground.     Colonial  America  had  made  such  a  man  out  of  a  ' 
boy  born  in  Boston  in  1706,  the  fifteenth  child  of  a  poor 
Boston  soap-maker.     Benjamin  Franklin  had  been  a  printer 
in  Boston,  Philadelphia,   and  London  by  the   time  he  was 
twenty.     His  "Poor  Richard's  Almanac,"  the  "Pennsylvania 


60  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Gazette/'  the  printing  of  the  Pennsylvania  paper  currency 
started  him  on  a  business  career  so  successful  that  he  retired 
upon  a  competence  at  the  age  of  forty-three.  He  entered 
local  politics  and  was  soon  sent  to  England  to  negotiate  with 
,  the  Penns  for  a  settlement  of  the  old  dispute  about  the  quit- 
)  rents.  His  tact  and  finesse  attracted  such  attention  that  he 
became  the  Massachusetts  agent,  and  then  the  general  colonial 
agent  at  London,  where  he  remained  till  the  outbreak  of  the 
[Revolution.  He  was  acquiring  that  diplomatic  experience  of 
which  his  country  stood  in  need  in  1776  when  an  alliance  was 
to  be  proposed  to  France.  He  also  brought  to  the  service 
of  America  a  European  reputation  for  scientific  achieve 
ment  of  the  first  order,  gained  by  his  epoch-making  experi 
ments  with  electricity.  It  is  certainly  an  extraordinary  fact 
that  "the  wilderness,"  as  the  Europeans  called  America, 
should  have  produced  a  man  who  was  not  only  a  philosopher 
and  scientist  of  the  first  order,  but  who  was  clearly  the  equal 
of  the  European  diplomatists  matched  against  him,  and  who, 
as  it  was  remarked  with  astonishment,  was  not  abashed  in 
the  presence  of  kings.  The  reputation  of  Franklin  in  Europe 
for  wisdom,  sanity,  and  probity  enabled  him  to  borrow  vast 
sums  of  money  on  no  better  security  than  his  personal  assur 
ance  that  some  day  they  would  be  paid.  That  such  a  man 
should  be  the  American  ambassador  went  a  long  way  to 
wards  convincing  the  French  that  we  deserved  independence. 
If  the  character  of  Washington  was  our  army,  that  of  Frank 
lin  was  our  treasury. 


VI 

STATES'  SOVEREIGNTY 

THE  impartial  student  who  reads  without  prejudgment  the 
evidence  of  the  colonial  period  will  hardly  be  able  to  avoid 
the  conclusion  that,  whatever  nominal  bond  the  individual 
colonies  recognized  as  binding  them  to  the  Crown  or  to  a  lord 
proprietor  in  England,  they  considered  themselves  sovereign 
States  in  all  but  name.1  The  tiny  Confederation  of  Ports 
mouth  and  Newport  formally  declared  in  1641  that  "the  Gov 
ernment  which  this  Bodie  Politick  doth  attend  unto  in  this 
island  and  the  Jurisdiction  thereof,  in  favor  of  our  prince,  is  a 
Democratic  or  Popular  government;  that  is  to  say,  it  is  in 
the  power  of  the  Body  of  freemen  orderly  assembled,  or 
the  major  part  of  them,  to  make  or  constitute  just  laws  by 
which  they  will  be  regulated/'  The  Crown  is  mentioned 
merely  by  courtesy;  no  other  authority  than  that  of  the 
freemen  themselves  is  recognized ;  and  not  only  do  they  speak 
of  "this  Bodie  Politick,"  and  denominate  it  a  "confedera 
tion/'  both  of  which  terms  proclaim  sovereignty,  but  they 
declare  "this  Bodie  Politick "  to  be  a  "democratic  or  Popu 
lar  government."  There  could  scarcely  be  a  more  implicit 
renunciation  of  English  sovereignty.  When  the  Long  Par 
liament  had  firmly  grasped  the  scepter  of  empire,  its  leaders 

i  The  use  of  the  word  "colony"  seems  to  me  objectionable  for  many 
reasons,  the  chief  of  which  is  that  it  continually  reminds  the  reader  of 
a  legal  superiority  of  England  over  them  which  the  Americans  never 
recognized  in  actual  practice  except  when  convenient.  Until  inde 
pendence  was  actually  declared,  however,  the  word  "State"  is  hardly 
correct,  because  it  denies  a  relationship  to  England  which  in  theory  the 
Americans  gladly  recognized.  The  usage  of  students  sanctions  "col 
ony"  and  forbids  "State,"  and  I  have  felt  it  better  to  employ  the 
familiar  word  except  in  cases  where  I  have  deemed  it  essential  to 
emphasize  the  fact  of  States'  sovereignty. 

61 


62  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

intimated  to  the  Puritans  in  New  England  that  they  would 
be  glad  to  pass  any  desired  legislation.  It  is  an  extremely 
significant  fact  that  Massachusetts  declined  the  offer  for  fear 
of  creating  a  precedent  for  legislation  by  Parliament  at 
some  subsequent  epoch  when  the  men  in  control  at  Westmin 
ster  might  not  be  so  favorably  disposed  towards  the  colony. 
This  same  idea  of  the  proper  relationship  between  England 
and  the  colonies  was  writ  large  in  the  preamble  of  the 
Articles  of  the  New  England  Confederation  of  1643.  By 
the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War,  they  say:  "We  are  hindered 
both  from  that  humble  way  of  seeking  advice,  and  reaping 
those  comfortable  fruits  of  protection  which  at  other  times 
we  might  expect. "  And  from  whom  could  they  more  reason 
ably  have  expected  "advice"  and  "protection"  than  from 
their  co-religionists?  Already  the  New  England  colonies  saw 
themselves  as  States  independent  of  the  mother-country  in 
all  but  name,  the  only  connection  with  England  being  their 
right  to  seek  advice  and  protection.  Of  English  rule,  of 
English  right  to  interfere  in  colonial  administration,  we  find 
no  recognition.  The  very  word  "colony"  is  rare  except  in 
the  most  formal  documents  and  is  almost  invariably  coupled 
with  the  term  commonly  employed,  "jurisdiction."  After 
Edmund  Randolph  had  been  in  Massachusetts  some  months 
in  1676  this  fact  became  very  clear  to  him.  "In  this  as  well 
as  in  other  things,"  he  wrote,  "that  government  [of  Massa 
chusetts]  would  make  the  world  believe  they  are  a  free  State 
and  [they]  act  in  all  matters  accordingly."  In  very  truth, 
the  position  which  the  States  assumed  in  1776  was  the  same 
they  had  held  throughout  their  earlier  history.  They  never 
had  recognized  more  than  a  nominal  right  of  England  to 
interfere  in  America  and  they  did  not  propose  to  accept  at 
the  dictation  of  George  III  a  theory  in  regard  to  their  status 
which  their  fathers  had  uniformly  rejected  as  untrue  and 
inexpedient.  The  Americans  in  1776  took  their  stand  upon 
the  solid  basis  of  history  as  they  -knew  it  to  have  happened. 
In  sooth,  though  the  English  government  was  early  in 
formed  of  this  tendency  by  the  enemies  of  the  colonists,  and 


STATES'  SOVEREIGNTY  63 

though  it  several  times  felt  the  matter  important  enough  to 
deserve  investigation,  the  exigencies  of  the  situation  in  Eng 
land  itself  gave  Charles  I  and  his  sons  little  real  oppor 
tunity  to  press  the  matter  to  a  conclusion.  The  attitude  of 
Massachusetts  at  these  times  is  extremely  significant  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  Revolution.  When  the  news  arrived  in 
1634  that  the  King  meant  to  appoint  a  new  governor  for  the 
colony,  the  General  Court  ordered  the  harbor  fortified,  ap 
pointed  a  commission  of  war  and  called  out  the  militia,  in  ex 
pectation,  they  announced,  of  "danger  from  the  French." 
There  is  no  fact  in  colonial  history  more  remarkable  than 
this:  that  four  years  after  the  founding  of  Boston,  the  men 
of  Massachusetts  were  prepared  to  fight  England  in 
maintenance  of  their  liberties.  The  spirit  of  1776  is 
merely  the  recrudescence  of  the  spirit  of  1634.  When 
the  royal  commissioners  were  expected  in  1664,  the  General 
Court  ordered  out  the  militia,  and  appointed  a  committee  to 
hide  the  Charter.  The  Commissioners  learned  to  their  amaze 
ment  that  they  were  expected  to  land  with  only  a  few  men, 
unarmed,  and  that,  instead  of  receiving  the  royal  representa 
tives  with  joy,  the  community  was  holding  a  day  of  fasting 
and  humiliation.  A  good  deal  of  verbal  willingness  to  meet 
the  King's  demands  was  expressed,  but  the  numerous  delays 
and  the  excessive  amount  of  discussion  which  followed  every 
request  soon  roused  the  suspicions  of  the  Commissioners,  who 
at  length  formally  asked  whether  the  General  Court  recog 
nized  the  validity  of  their  commission.  The  Court  replied 
that  it  wished  respectfully  to  know  wherein  the  colonists  were 
at  fault,  and,  after  much  pressing,  finally  said:  "We  humbly 
conceive  it  is  beyond  our  line  to  declare  our  sense  of  the 
power,  intent,  or  purpose  of  your  commission.  It  is  enough 
for  us  to  acquaint  you  what  we  conceive  is  granted  to  us  by 
his  Majesty's  royal  charter.  If  you  rest  not  satisfied  with 
our  former  answer,  it  is  our  trouble,  but  we  hope  it  is  not  our 
fault."  The  Commissioners  rebuked  them  and  notified  them 
that  they  proposed  next  day  to  avail  themselves  of  their  com 
mission  and  try  a  case.  The  next  morning  they  found  a 


64  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

messenger  of  the  General  Court  on  their  doorstep,  warning 
the  people  by  the  "allegiance  that  they  owed  to  his  Majesty," 
not  to  aid  or  abet  them,  for  they  were  usurping  powers  which 
were  not  rightfully  theirs.  The  General  Court  a  few  hours 
later  tried  that  case  itself. 

Some  very  plain  language  reached  the  Commissioners'  ears: 
"  They  say  that  so  long  as  they  pay  the  fifth  of  all  gold  and 
silver  according  to  the  terms  of  the  Charter,  they  are  not 
obliged  to  the  King,  but  by  civility;"  "they  say  they  can 
easily  spin  out  seven  years  by  writing,  and  before  that  time 
a  change  may  come."  They  had  solicited  Cromwell  "by  one 
Mr.  Winsloe  to  be  declared  a  Free  State,  and  now  style  and 
believe  themselves  to  be  so."  Charles  replied  with  a  royal 
order  to  send  the  officers  of  the  colony  to  England.  The 
General  Court,  when  shown  it,  expressed  doubts  as  to  its 
authenticity  and  asked  proof  that  the  signature  was  really 
the  King's!  Charles,  however,  was  unwilling  to  press  the 
matter  and  allowed  it  to  drop.  Had  he  shown  George  Ill's 
determination  to  force  from  them  an  acknowledgment  of 
England's  sovereignty,  is  it  difficult  to  imagine  the  result? 
In  the  other  colonies,  the  same  leaven  was  at  work.  Penn's 
agent  wrote  him  in  1704:  "This  people  think  privileges  their 
due  and  all  that  can  be  grasped  to  be  their  native  right.  .  .  . 
They  think  it  their  business  to  secure  themselves  against  a 
Queen's  government." 

In  fact,  the  colonies  saw  in  1776  that  the  declaration  of 
their  independence  would  involve  no  real  administrative  dif 
ficulties,  because  they  had  in  very  truth  never  been  actually 
governed  by  England  at  all.  As  Franklin  ironically  told  the 
House  of  Commons,  the  colonies  before  1763  had  been  easily 
governed  at  the  expense  of  only  "a  little  pen,  ink,  and  paper; 
they  were  led  by  a  thread."  Nor  did  his  hearers  perceive 
that  he  spoke  the  literal  truth.  There  was,  indeed,  in  the 
colonies  in  1760,  as  there  had  been  throughout  the  preceding 
century,  a  prodigious  admiration  for  England,  a  feeling  that 
it  was  "home,"  and,  as  Franklin  said,  "to  be  an  Old  Eng 
land  man  was  of  itself  a  character  of  some  respect  and  gave 


STATES'  SOVEREIGNTY  65 

a  kind  of  rank  among  us."  Even  the  early  Puritans  had 
considered  the  English  Church  their  mother-church,  had  at 
tended  its  services  when  in  England,  and  had  spoken  of 
it  with  evident  affection.  At  the  same  time,  paradoxically, 
the  colonists  felt  no  gratitude  was  due  the  Crown  or  Parlia 
ment  for  their  existence  or  prosperity.  The  Address  pre 
sented  by  Massachusetts  to  Parliament  in  1661  declared  sig 
nificantly  that  they  had  transplanted  themselves  at  their  own 
expense  and  owed  their  present  condition  to  their  own  efforts 
in  the  preceding  thirty  years  during  which  they  had  been 
undisturbed.  The  attempts  of  the  Crown  to  collect  quitrents 
in  Virginia,  the  energy  with  which  the  Baltimores  and  the 
Penns  had  attempted  to  collect  their  rents,  were  conspicuous 
features  of  life  in  those  colonies,  and  had  roused  even  by 
1700  a  resentment,  often  openly  expressed,  against  these  at 
tempts  to  derive  a  revenue  from  the  colony.  The  Penns  were 
told  more  than  once  that  the  colony  was  not  a  private  estate 
which  owed  them  rent,  but  a  body  politic,  whose  members 
possessed  the  right  of  self-government,  and  of  which  the  pro 
prietors  were  members,  like  other  citizens.  The  citizens  ob 
jected  to  the  payment  of  rent  not  because  its  amount  was 
excessive,  but  because  they  did  not  feel  themselves  bound 
by  law  or  gratitude  to  pay  it  at  all.  And  these  facts  were 
prominent  in  the  minds  of  the  leaders  who  fought  the  Revolu 
tion.  ''The  settlement,"  wrote  Jefferson  in  1786,  "was  not 
made  by  public  authority  and  at  the  public  expense  of  Eng 
land,  but  by  the  exertions  and  at  the  expense  of  individuals. ' ' 
Colonial  experience  had  taught  the  colonists  that  they  owed 
England  no  gratitude  for  what  they  had  not  received. 

The  fault  was  not  altogether  that  of  intention  at  White 
hall.  As  soon  as  Charles  II  was  firmly  seated  on  the  throne, 
he  created  a  committee  of  the  Privy  Council  to  supervise  the 
colonial  governments,  which  was  continued  under  various 
names  and  did  all  that  was  done  to  govern  them  until  1763. 
This  was  in  truth  little,  but  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  it  could 
have  been  more.  The  average  voyage  to  England  consumed 
six  weeks  and  the  colonists  knew,  therefore,  that  they  could 


66  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

not  receive  a  reply  to  an  appeal  for  advice  or  protection,  even 
if  acted  upon  at  once,  in  less  than  three  full  months  at  the 
soonest.  A  little  experience  showed  them,  that  they  must  wait 
for  a  reply  nearly  a  year.  After  their  petition  reached  Lon 
don,  it  must  be  read,  the  facts  investigated,  their  request 
considered  and  passed  upon  by  a  number  of  busy  men,  who 
ordinarily  had  before  them  awaiting  action  a  score  of  mat 
ters  equally  urgent.  As  was  usual,  the  work  of  the  commit 
tee  devolved  upon  one  man,  its  secretary,  William  Blathwayt, 
whose  diligence  and  energy  were  remarkable,  but  were 
completely  overwhelmed  by  the  physical  labor  of  merely  read 
ing  the  mountain  of  papers  concerning  administrative  routine 
voluntarily  submitted  by  the  colonies.  Anything  like  effect 
ive  supervision  was  practically  impossible.  If  an  order  was 
sent  to  a  colony,  the  committee  well  knew  that  the  colonists 
would  have  a  full  six  months  to  disobey  it  before  proceedings 
could  be  instituted  against  them  or  even  information  of  their 
delinquency  brought  to  London.  A  law,  "  repugnant  to  the 
laws  of  England,"  and  forbidden  therefore  by  the  charters, 
would  usually  have  been  in  full  operation  for  months  if  not 
years  before  the  London  office  discovered  its  repugnancy. 
With  twelve  legislatures  producing  laws  on  the  Atlantic 
coast,  the  work  of  reading  them  became  a  formidable  task,  and 
the  difficulty  of  detecting  and  dealing  promptly  with  objection 
able  laws  exceedingly  great.  Well  aware  of  these  facts,  the 
colonists  easily  prevented  any  supervision  at  all  over  impor 
tant  matters  by  passing  laws  for  one  year  only,  which  would 
no  longer  be  in  force  when  read  in  England,  and  which  could 
easily  be  repassed  year  after. year  by  the  legislature  without 
fear  of  the  effectual  exercise  of  the  royal  veto.  The  second 
Massachusetts  charter  required  the  submission  to  the  English 
authorities  of  all  "acts,"  so  the  General  Court  submitted  a 
long  list  of  unimportant  "acts,"  and  transacted  all  important 
business  by  means  of  "resolves"  which  were  not  required  to 
be  sent  to  England.  In  Pennsylvania,  all  acts  wrere  required 
to  be  submitted  every  five  years  to  the  English  authorities, 
a  provision  easily  evaded  by  passing  acts  likely  to  be  vetoed 


STATES'  SOVEREIGNTY  67 

for  periods  not  longer  than  four  years  and  six  months.  Dum- 
mer,  the  Massachusetts  agent  in  London,  wrote  home  an 
1716  that  the  Secretary  of  State  had  told  him  that  "by 
several  votes  and  resolutions  of  the  lower  House,  printed  in 
their  journals,  we  showed  an  inclination  to  be  independent 
of  the  administration  here  [in  England]  and  that  we  treated 
the  King's  commands  as  waste  paper." 

No  sooner  had  the  authorities  in  England  become  aware  of 
this  propensity  than  they  undertook  to  overcome  it;  at  first 
by  the  supervision  of  the  Committee  of  Trade  and  Plantations, 
and  then  by  the  appointment  of  governors  who  would  ac 
complish  on  the  ground  what  could  not  be  done  by  officials 
in  England.  The  colonists  were  equal  to  the  emergency. 
Without  coming  to  an  open  breach  with  the  Crown,  they 
managed  to  nullify  the  work  of  the  royal  governors  and 
other  appointive  officials,  or,  in  those  colonies  which  chose 
their  own  officers,  succeeded  in  evading  supervision.  Mas 
sachusetts  held  governor  after  governor  helpless  by  refusing 
to  vote  him  a  salary  or  make  any  regular  allowance  either 
for  the  expenses  of  administration  or  for  his  household. 
They  paid  him  from  time  to  time  by  allowing  him  to  sign  a  bill 
voting  him  a  present  after  he  had  affixed  his  signature  to  the 
bills  the  General  Court  wished  passed.  Strict  orders  were 
sent  from  England  prohibiting  the  acceptance  of  anything 
but  a  salary,  for  the  authorities  rightly  saw  that  much  might 
be  expected  from  a  governor  financially  independent,  and 
nothing  at  all  from  a  man  dependent  upon  the  assembly's 
votes  for  the  very  bread  on  his  table.  Yet  governor  after 
governor  found  it  impossible  to  resist  this  pressure  from  the 
legislature. 

There  seems  to  have  been  a  general  recognition  of  the 
right  of  judicial  appeal  to  the  Privy  Council  from  the  colo 
nial  courts;  but,  though  frequently  used  by  individuals,  it 
was  chiefly  confined  to  cases  where  the  colonial  judges  pat 
ently  were  not  sure  what  decision  to  render. 

The  only  series  of  general  regulations  made  by  the  mother- 
country  were  systematically  disregarded  from  the  moment  they 


68  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

were  made.  The  Navigation  Acts,  passed  during  the  reigns 
of  Charles  II  and  William  III,  restricted  the  trade  of  the 
mother-country  with  the  colonies  and  that  of  the  outside 
world  with  her  colonies  entirely  to  English  and  colonial  ships. 
The  more  important  colonial  staples — sugar,  molasses,  to 
bacco,  dye-woods — were  to  be  carried  only  to  other  English 
colonies  or  to  England.  Trade  with  foreign  countries  or  with 
their  West  India  colonies  was  forbidden.  Not  only  were  the 
detailed  regulations  of  these  acts  disobeyed,  but  even  their 
general  intent  was  nullified.  The  coast  was  crowded  with 
smugglers ;  sugar  and  molasses  were  openly  sold  at  more  than 
one  place  for  less  money  than  the  duty;  most  ships  carried 
several  sets  of  false  papers,  and  traded  at  will  with  the 
foreign  sugar  islands  in  the  West  Indies  and  with  Europe. 
The  English  calculated  in  1767  that  a  trade  worth  more  than 
a  quarter  of  a  million  pounds  sterling  was  being  carried 
on  by  America  with  Germany  and  Holland.  Attempt  after 
attempt  to  stop  the  smuggling  was  of  no  avail;  new  acts, 
new  regulations,  were  simply  waste  paper,  and  few  or  no 
men  could  be  found  in  America  who  were  willing  to  accept 
an  appointment  as  customs  officer,  so  excessively  unpopular 
was  the  service  and  so  determined  were  the  colonists  to  evade 
the  regulations.  Randolph  was  astonished  at  the  lengths  to 
which  they  went  in  Boston  in  1676  to  thwart  him.  They 
landed  their  goods  at  night  and  when  he  appeared  to  investi 
gate  arrested  him  for  breaking  the  curfew  rule ;  they  landed 
the  goods  on  Sunday,  and  arrested  him  for  working  on  the 
Sabbath.  The  courts  would  issue  only  special  search  war 
rants  permitting  him  to  search  only  for  specified  articles  in 
a  specified  place.  He  found  that  the  merchants  had  built 
a  series  of  connecting  warehouses,  and,  after  they  had  seen 
his  warrant,  kept  him  standing  at  the  door  while  they  rolled 
the  sugar  and  molasses  into  the  next  warehouse.  When  there 
was  nothing  he  could  seize  left  in  the  place  he  was  allowed 
to  search,  they  admitted  him.  Their  intention  to  disobey  was 
an  open  secret.  Violence  was  not  unfrequent  in  later  years 
where  the  customs  officers  showed  any  real  determination: 


STATES'  SOVEREIGNTY  69 

heads  were  broken,  ships  burned,  officers  tarred  and  feathered, 
ridden  on  rails,  or  even  murdered.  It  is  easy  to  understand 
the  fierce  objection  to  the  Writs  of  Assistance  in  1761,  which 
permitted  the  search  and  seizure  of  dutiable  goods  wherever 
the  officer  could  find  them;  they  made  all  the  familiar  ex 
pedients  for  evasion  useless.  Another  difficulty  was  experi 
enced  in  the  jury  trials  of  such  men  as  were  arraigned.  It 
was  almost  impossible  to  secure  a  conviction  from  any  local 
jury  and  the  English  admiralty  officials  were  anxious  to  obtain 
the  right  to  try  such  cases  in  some  other  colony  than  that 
where  the  offense  was  committed.  As  few  men  were  innocent 
and  few  cases  were  tried  where  the  party  was  not  caught 
flagrante  delict o,  such  a  removal  of  the  trial  was  tantamount 
to  certain  conviction,  and  the  penalties  for  breach  of  the  acts 
were  extremely  severe.  The  colonists  therefore  resisted  these 
proposals  stoutly.  It  is  extremely  interesting  to  note  the 
similarity  of  the  measures  which  roused  such  indignation  after 
1760  to  those  which  had  excited  active  opposition  during 
the  colonial  period.  The  outbreak  after  1760  was  due  not 
only  to  the  fact  that  the  English  government  was  making  a 
systematic  and  persistent  attempt  at  enforcement  for  prac 
tically  the  first  time,  but  also  to  the  new  consciousness  of 
the  colonists  of  their  growing  strength  and  of  the  actuality 
of  their  independence. 

The  favorite  idea  in  England  for  the  solution  of  all  these 
difficulties  was  that  of  a  colonial  union  of  some  sort,  and 
many  schemes  were  evolved  and  proposed.  Some  provided 
for  a  common  administrative  and  judicial  machinery;  others 
contemplated  some  sort  of  a  general  legislative  body  with  more 
or  less  limited  powers;  but  one  and  all  established  a  central 
machinery  intended  to  be  directed  by  the  Crown,  even  when 
its  officers  were  not  actually  to  be  appointed  in  England,  and 
patently  meant  to  supersede  the  authority  of  the  individual 
colonies  in  many  matters  of  importance,  and  perhaps  to  out 
vote  the  unruly  by  means  of  the  more  peaceable.  One  such 
scheme  was  actually  put  into  operation  with  disastrous  re 
sults.  Sir  Edmund  Andros  was  appointed  Governor  of  New 


70  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

England,  New  York,  and  New  Jersey,  with  broad  powers  and 
unusual  privileges  to  take  the  place  of  the  charters  just  re 
voked  in  1684.  Some  opposition  was  expected,  and  probably 
nothing  but  the  knowledge  of  impending  changes  in  England 
prevented  an  actual  rebellion  before  1689  when,  on  pretense 
of  casting  out  the  Stuarts,  Andros  was  put  in  jail  and  the 
old  charter  governments  restored.  William  III  was  not  al 
together  blind  to  the  fact  that  enthusiasm  for  him  had  not 
been  the  chief  motive  at  work,  and  only  after  great  suspense 
and  some  difficulty  were  much  less  favorable  charters  ob 
tained.  This  was,  however,  until  the  Revolution  the  only 
attempt  to  institute  any  uniform  administration. 

The  reply  of  the  colonies  to  the  other  schemes  for  centrali 
zation  and  for  a  central  government  was  an  unqualified  neg 
ative.  No  scheme  won  colonial  approval  which  was  not  based 
upon  the  conception  of  the  several  colonies  as  sovereign  States. 
The  New  England  Confederation,  formed  in  1643,  was  a 
league  of  States  for  offense  and  defense,  and  contained  in 
one  of  its  first  clauses  an  explicit  reservation  of  the  liberties 
and  privileges  of  each  "  jurisdiction. "  In  their  dealings  with 
each  other,  the  colonies  always  preserved  scrupulously  this 
attitude  and  signed  "treaties,"  made  commercial  regulations, 
granted  letters  of  marque,  coined  money,  declared  war  and 
peace,  and  performed  most  of  the  varied  acts  customarily 
reserved  to  the  sovereign.  In  some  cases,  the  language  of  the 
charter  lent  directly  or  indirectly  some  color  to  these  pro 
ceedings,  but  it  is  safe  to  say  that  they  were  not  undertaken 
because  of  the  existence  of  any  such  permission,  nor  limited 
to  powers  authorized  by  even  a  liberal  interpretation  of  any 
document.  Whatever  they  were  in  law  or  in  name,  the 
colonies  were  and  always  had  been  individually  sovereign  and 
they  had  in  1760  and  1776  absolutely  no  intention  of  sur 
rendering  that  independence  to  each  other,  to  a  central  ad 
ministration,  or  to  England.  Several  schemes  were  suggested 
by  colonists  for  three  or  four  sectional  governments  and  these 
met  with  some  favor.  At  Albany,  in  1754,  representatives  of 
the  colonies  finally  agreed  upon  a  scheme  for  a  general  govern- 


STATES'  SOVEREIGNTY  71 

ment,  which  was  much  disliked  in  England  because  the  powers 
allotted  the  general  government  were  too  few  and  those  re 
served  to  the  individual  colonies  too  many,  because  the  central 
administration  was  not  strong  and  the  thirteen  colonies  in 
comparably  too  independent.  It  found  equally  little  favor 
in  America  because  it  gave  the  general  government  the  power 
of  taxation  and  the  control  of  commerce.  The  one  the  in 
dividual  colonies  had  always  had,  the  other  they  had  always 
coveted.  In  truth,  one  cardinal  fact  of  the  colonial  period 
is  the  legal  and  actual  independence  of  the  several  colonies  of 
each  other  and  their  actual  independence  of  England. 
States'  sovereignty  was  the  only  idea  which  possessed  much 
precedent  in  1775,  and  the  only  idea  of  cooperation  ever  tried 
and  widely  approved  had  been  that  of  a  loose  confederation 
of  sovereign  States,  which  had  control  neither  of  taxation 
nor  of  commerce,  and  whose  central  authority  was  little  more 
than  a  general  agent  whose  masters  from  time  to  time  in 
dicated  their  wishes.  Surely  it  is  significant  to  find  the 
Parliamentary  Commission  of  1652  conceding  to  Virginia  in 
exchange  for  her  submission,  that  "the  Grand  Assembly  as 
formerly  shall  convene  and  transact  the  affairs  of  Virginia," 
and  that  the  Virginians  should  have  freedom  of  trade  "as 
the  people  of  England  do,"  and  should  "be  free  from  all 
taxes,  customs,  and  impositions  whatsoever,  and  none  to  be 
imposed  upon  them  without  consent  of  the  Grand  Assembly." 
"The  bottom  of  all  the  disorder,"  wrote  Hutchinson  from 
Massachusetts  in  1772,  is  "the  opinion  that  every  colony  has 
a  legislature  within  itself,  the  acts  and  doings  of  which  are 
not  to  be  controlled  by  Parliament,  and  that  no  legislative 
power  ought  to  be  exercised  over  the  colonies  except  by  their 
legislatures."  The  Revolution  was  fought  by  precisely  that 
sort  of  an  organization  which  colonial  experience  had  shown 
was  the  only  one  for  which  the  general  consent  could  be 
gained. 

There  was  naturally  no  accepted  idea  whatever  of  a  nation 
as  we  now  conceive  it;  there  was  indeed  no  sentiment  in 
favor  of  nationality;  each  colony  wished  to  be  independent 


72  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

not  only  of  England  but  of  its  neighbors,  and  would  not  have 
entered  the  struggle  on  any  other  terms.  The  strong  bond  of 
economic  interest  which  was  later  to  furnish  such  cogent 
reasons  for  nationality  was  as  yet  non-existent  because  the 
colonies  were  as  yet  contiguous  only  "on  paper."  The  colo 
nial  period,  from  the  point  of  view  which  we  apply  to 
later  history,  is  the  study  of  the  foreign  relations  of  the 
separate  States  with  each  other  and  with  England.  In  no 
colony  was  there  a  majority  in  favor  of  a  national  government 
superior  in  obligation  in  its  relations  to  the  individual  to  the 
latter 's  duty  to  his  colony.  When  Patrick  Henry  declared 
himself  not  a  Virginian  but  an  American,  he  proclaimed  not 
a  fact  but  a  vision. 


VII 
THE  IMMEDIATE  CAUSES  OF  THE  REVOLUTION 

THE  fundamental  causes  of  the  Revolution  are  writ  large  in 
the  history  of  the  colonial  period.  The  rapidly  increasing 
population  of  the  colonies,  their  growing  wealth,  the  depend 
ence  of  the  West  India  Islands  upon  their  produce,  their  long 
experience  in  self-government,  their  determination  not  to  sub 
mit  to  dictation  or  control  from  England  or  from  each  other, 
had  made  them  more  and  more  conscious  with  each  succeed 
ing  decade  of  the  weakness  of  England's  control  over  them, 
of  the  almost  insuperable  difficulties  which  the  width  of  the 
Atlantic  interposed  in  the  way  of  schemes  for  strengthening 
it  or  for  making  it  more  effective.  They  saw,  indeed,  that 
they  had  always  stood  alone  and  they  naturally  concluded 
that  they  might  now  as  well  declare  the  fact.  The  longer 
they  studied  the  story  of  the  settlement  of  the  country,  the 
less  they  felt  themselves  bound  to  the  mother-country  by  ties 
of  gratitude  for  an  aid  in  money  or  in  men  which  she  had 
either  been  unwilling  or  unable  to  send.  The  Navigation 
Acts  on  their  very  face  were  intended  to  benefit  only  the 
citizens  of  England  itself,  for  Ireland  and  Scotland  were 
expressly  excluded  from  their  privileges;  the  royal  governors 
had  imposed  expense  upon  the  colonies  and,  instead  of  render 
ing  valuable  service  in  administration,  had  done  their  best  to 
prevent  the  transaction  of  the  public  business  in  the  ways 
which  experience  had  taught  the  colonists  to  be  the  most  ex 
pedient.  Not  the  suffering,  but  the  prosperity  of  the  colo 
nies,  not  their  weakness  but  their  strength,  not  the  tyranny 
of  an  autocratic  government  but  the  obvious  lack  of  any 
effective  supervision  at  all,  caused  the  Revolution.  They 
had  grown  to  a  realization  of  the  truth  of  Berkeley's  warn- 

73 


74  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

ing  to  the  Virginia  Assembly  in  1652.  "What  is  it  can  be 
hoped  for  [from  the  Parliament]  which  we  have  not  already? 
Is  it  liberty  ?  The  sun  looks  not  upon  a  people  more  free  than 
we  are  from  all  oppression.  Is  it  wealth  ?  .  .  .  Industry  and 
thrift  in  a  short  time  may  bring  us  to  ...  it.  ...  Is  it  ... 
peace?  The  Indians,  God  be  blessed,  round  about  us  are 
subdued;  we  can  only  feare  the  Londoners." 

The  immediate  causes  of  the  outbreak  are  to  be  found  in 
the  changed  conditions  after  the  close  of  the  Seven  Years' 
War  and  in  the  events  of  the  years  from  1760  to  1775.  The 
result  of  the  Seven  Years'  War  was  of  transcendent  impor 
tance  :  the  departure  of  the  French  from  Canada  removed  the 
only  external  reason  the  colonists  had  for  valuing  the  con 
nection  with  England.  The  existence  of  the  French  colony 
rather  than  its  history,  its  loss  rather  than  the  method  of 
its  loss  indicate  the  salient  influence  of  the  French  upon  the 
history  of  the  United  States.  Before  the  fur-traders  had  been 
long  settled  in  the  St.  Lawrence  Valley,  they  discovered  that 
it  lay  just  north  of  the  corn-belt  and  that  the  existence  of  a 
colony  there  would  always  be  precarious  because  of  the  diffi 
culty  of  ripening  a  full  crop  of  the  only  indigenous  grain. 
The  attempts  to  escape  from  the  Valley  are  the  most  vital 
part  of  the  history  of  French  Canada.  Through  New  York 
lay  a  splendid  road  down  the  Richelieu  River  and  the  lakes 
to  within  a  few  miles  of  the  Hudson  and  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 
Through  the  Connecticut  River  valley  lay  another  desirable 
road.  Along  both  lay  fertile  fields  in  a  climate  which  made 
the  cultivation  of  maize  as  successful  as  it  was  precarious 
around  the  St.  Lawrence.  The  knowledge  of  this  eagerness 
to  secure  possession  of  New  York  or  New  England  rather 
than  their  actual  strength  in  Canada  caused  the  abiding  fears 
of  invasion  in  the  English  colonies,  which  bound  them  firmly 
to  the  English  allegiance  for  a  century  and  more.  To  the 
Congregationalists  of  New  England,  the  greatest  danger  was 
to  be  feared  from  Catholicism,  and  a  stock  part  of  every  war 
scare  in  the  eighteenth  century  were  the  lurid  tales  of  the 
ship-loads  of  inquisitors  and  instruments  of  torture  which 


THE  IMMEDIATE  CAUSES  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  75 

were  following  in  the  wake  of  the  great  French  fleet,  coming 
from  France  to  cooperate  with  an  army  from  Canada  in  an 
attack  upon  New  York  or  Boston. 

Had  Champlain  not  offended  the  Iroquois  in  1609  the 
history  of  the  United  States  might  have  been  different.  That 
powerful  confederacy  of  the  ablest  and  best  organized  In 
dians  on  the  continent  held  sway  over  a  vast  territory  rang 
ing  from  the  Alleghanies  to  the  Mississippi  and  from  southern 
Tennessee  to  the  Great  Lakes.  Their  home  land  was  in  New 
York  and  their  determined  opposition  to  the  French  and 
persistent  friendliness  to  the  English,  despite  promises,  bribes, 
and  missionaries,  interposed  an  impenetrable  wall  between  the 
French  and  the  fertile  fields  of  the  Atlantic  coast,  and  thus 
condemned  Canada  to  insignificance.  The  only  hope  lay  to 
the  west  in  the  Mississippi  Valley  beyond  and  behind  the  in 
fluence  of  the  Iroquois.  There  were  fertile  fields  and  a  vast 
supply  of  furs.  Yet,  while  striving  to  build  up  this  empire 
in  the  west,  the  French  never  quite  abandoned  hope  of  reach 
ing  the  Atlantic  Ocean.  But  the  alliance  between  the  Iroquois 
and  the  English  was  so  firmly  cemented  in  1684  by  Governor 
Dongan  of  New  York  that  only  the  New  England  colonies 
remained  exposed  to  the  attacks  of  the  coureurs  de  bois  and 
the  Indians  of  the  St.  Lawrence  region.  So  strong  was 
New  England  that  nothing  more  than  marauding  expeditions 
was  to  be  feared  unless  assistance  should  come  in  force  from 
France.  More  than  once  such  a  great  expedition  was  planned ; 
at  least  once  French  regiments  from  Canada  reached  the 
neighborhood  of  Albany  undetected  and  could  have  captured 
it;  and,  if  small  scouting  parties  could  unchecked  ravage  the 
very  heart  of  New  England,  the  decisive  success  of  an  attack 
in  force  was  more  than  probable.1  Under  such  circumstances, 

i  How  strong  these  fears  were  is  shown  by  the  statement  prepared  by 
Commissioners  of  the  colonies  assembled  at  Albany  in  1754.  "That  it 
is  the  evident  design  of  the  French  to  surround  the  British  Colonies, 
to  fortify  themselves  on  the  back  thereof,  to  take  and  keep  possession 
of  the  Heads  of  all  the  important  Rivers,  to  draw  over  the  Indians  to 
their  Interest  and  with  the  help  of  such  Indians,  added  to  such  Forces 
as  are  already  arrived  and  may  be  hereafter  sent  from  Europe,  to  be 


76  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

nothing  could  save  the  colonies  but  an  English  army  and  an 
English  fleet.  Nor  should  we  ever  forget  that  between  1660 
and  1763,  France  was  accounted  easily  the  most  powerful 
nation  in  Europe.  This  potentiality  the  victories  of  Wolfe 
definitively  removed,  and,  as  travelers  and  English  political 
writers  had  busily  prophesied  for  more  than  a  decade,  Eng 
land  lost  what  Kahn  considered  "the  best  means  of  keeping 
her  colonies  in  due  submission." 

A  series  of  events  had  also  practically  ended  the  dangers 
of  attack  from  the  coast  Indians.  As  decade  by  decade  the 
colonies  grew  larger  in  population,  and  extended  further  and 
further  into  the  interior,  the  Indians  were  of  necessity  pushed 
nearer  and  nearer  the  mountains;  the  whites  began  actually 
to  outnumber  them  in  most  districts,  and  the  possibility  of 
anything  more  than  sporadic  outbreaks  disappeared.  Peace 
and  quiet  were  assured  even  more  certainly  by  the  growing 
scarcity  of  fur-bearing  animals  along  the  Atlantic  coast,  by 
the  consequent  decay  of  the  fur-trade,  and  by  the  concomitant 
disappearance  of  the  illicit  traders  who  had  so  threatened 
the  existence  of  the  infant  communities  by  distributing  fire 
arms  and  fire-water.  Such  trade  as  remained  the  colonists 
were  able  strictly  to  regulate.  In  addition,  the  founding  of 
the  Hudson  Bay  Company  in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century  and  the  exploration  by  the  French  of  the  Mississippi 
Valley  opened  a  vast  and  virgin  field  of  operations  for  the 
fur-traders,  and  thither  hastened  the  adventurous  spirits,  thus 
ridding  the  Atlantic  coast  of  the  very  men  whose  dealings 
and  behavior  had  so  frequently  given  the  Indians  just  cause 
for  offense. 

A  century,  too,  had  greatly  altered  the  Indians'  ideas  of  the 
white  men.  At  first,  the  notion  of  private  property  in  land 
was  new  to  the  savages,  and  the  superiority  of  iron  hatchets 
and  kettles,  to  say  nothing  of  guns  and  liquor,  over  anything 

in  a  Capacity  of  making  a  general  attack  upon  the  several  Governments. 
And  if  at  the  same  Time  a  strong  Naval  Force  be  sent  from  France, 
there  is  the  utmost  Danger  that  the  whole  Continent  will  be  subjected 
to  that  Crown."  Colonial  Records  of  Pennsylvania,  VI,  103. 


THE  IMMEDIATE  CAUSES  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  77 

the  Indian  possessed  was  so  marked  that  few  chiefs  hesitated 
before  assenting  to  deeds  of  sale  whose  purport  they  did  not 
understand.  The  white  man  wanted  land  for  corn,  grass  for 
his  cattle,  wood  for  his  wigwam;  and  they  supposed  that, 
like  the  Indian,  he  would  soon  move  his  habitation  when  the 
land  became  exhausted.  The  very  idea  of  permanent  pos 
session  was  not  grasped  at  first,  and  when  such  Indians  as 
Philip  comprehended  it,  a  fierce  hatred  for  the  intruders  led 
them  to  begin  a  crusade  of  extermination.  The  ease  with 
which  the  outbreaks  of  1675  and  1676  were  suppressed  damp 
ened  the  ardor  of  the  savages  and  reassured  the  whites.  By 
1760,  the  colonists  knew  themselves  capable  of  coping  with 
any  Indian  uprising.  No  aid  from  English  troops  was  needed. 
Indeed,  the  colonial  scorn  for  Braddock's  methods  and  troops 
was  ill  concealed,  and  his  defeat  rendered  extremely  unlikely 
any  subsequent  requests  to  the  mother-country  for  assistance. 
This  precise  moment,  when  the  colonists  for  the  first  time 
felt  free  from  the  dangers  with  which  the  French  and  the 
Indians  had  so  long  menaced  them,  was  selected  by  the  English 
ministry  as  opportune  for  the  introduction  of  uniform  ad 
ministrative  regulations,  which  could  not  fail  to  raise  ques 
tions  of  the  character  and  value  of  the  colonial  relations  with 
England.  Of  economic,  political,  and  social  conditions  in 
America,  George  III  and  his  advisers  knew  little ;  of  the  colo 
nial  hostility  towards  England,  they  were  aware  but  thought 
it  merely  insubordination.  That  the  colonies  possessed  any 
vitally  different  economic  interests  from  those  of  England 
and  Englishmen,  that  English  political  ideas  and  phraseology 
would  connote  very  different  things  to  the  colonists  than  they 
did  to  Englishmen,  they  do  not  seem  to  have  suspected.  They 
knew  indeed  that  no  real  control  of  the  colonies  had  hitherto 
existed,  but  they  deemed  it  a  result  of  the  stupidity  and 
inertia  of  their  own  predecessors  and  of  the  stubborn  spirit 
of  the  Americans  rather  than  a  consequence  of  fundamental 
geographical  factors,  which  still  stood  in  the  way  of  the  estab 
lishment  of  any  efficient  administration.  Indeed,  the  fact  that 
no  effective  control  had  existed  was  to  them  an  admirable 


78  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

reason   for   creating   a  system   which   should   make   English 
sovereignty  more  than  a  name. 

Indubitably,  the  conquest  of  Canada  caused  England  seri 
ously  to  consider  the  status  of  her  possessions  in  America, 
and  forced  upon  her  attention  the  fact  that  the  growth  of  the 
continental  colonies  during  the  past  half -century  had  vastly 
changed  the  problem  of  dealing  with  them.  The  few  scat 
tered  settlements  had  become  States  whose  size,  prosperity, 
and  spirit  forbade  the  longer  continuance  of  the  old  policy 
of  laissez-faire.  The  new  English  policy  aimed  at  centrali 
zation,  at  "the  weaving  of  this  land  into  our  system  ...  so 
that  Great  Britain  may  be  ...  a  grand  maritime  dominion 
consisting  of  our  possessions  in  the  Atlantic  and  in  America 
united  into  one  Empire,  into  one  center  where  the  seat  of 
government  is."  To  this  end  Charles  Townshend  proposed 
to  replace  the  varied  forms  of  colonial  government  by  a  uni 
form  system  of  local  administration  which  would  furnish  a 
firm  basis  for  an  efficient  central  administration  over  them  all. 
Experience  showed  the  necessity  of  taking  from  the  colonial 
legislatures  the  power  of  the  purse  and  of  providing  by 
customs  duties  and  stamp  taxes,  collected  by  royal  officers 
appointed  from  England,  a  sufficiently  large  revenue  to  sup 
port  an  army,  pay  the  salaries  of  executive  and  judicial 
officers,  and  in  general  defray  the  expenses  of  colonial  ad 
ministration.  Only  in  this  way  could  any  independence  be 
secured  for  the  royal  officials  and  obedience  be  ensured  to 
the  administrative  regulations  which  should  weave  England 
and  her  colonies  into  one  great  articulate  Empire.  If  the 
Navigation  Acts  and  the  Sugar  Acts  could  be  actually  en 
forced,  the  revenue  would  be  considerable  and  the  remainder 
of  the  necessary  sum  could  be  obtained  by  indirect  taxes 
whose  incidence  would  be  extremely  light.  Disobedience  and 
evasion  of  explicit  royal  orders,  smuggling  and  piracy,  trade 
with  foreign  colonies  and  European  countries,  none  of  which 
could  continue  without  disrupting  the  new  Empire  before 
it  was  born,  would  all  cease;  order,  harmony,  and  efficiency 
would  take  the  place  of  the  old  haphazard  rule. 


THE  IMMEDIATE  CAUSES  OF  THE  REVOLUTION     79 

If  we  assume  with  Townshend  that  the  colonies  were  merely 
dependencies  of  England,  to  be  governed  by  the  Crown  in 
accordance  with  the  legislation  passed  by  Parliament,  if  we 
find  glorious  as  he  the  vision  of  a  greater  entity  built  out  of 
the  mother-country  and  colonies  for  the  ultimate  benefit  of 
both,  then  we  shall  agree  with  his  conclusion  of  the  justice, 
equity,  and  expediency  of  such  a  scheme.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  take  as  our  premise  the  actual  condition  of  colonies 
which  had  been  for  more  than  a  century  sovereign  States 
in  all  but  name,  we  shall  begin  to  understand  the  instanta 
neous  opposition  which  those  proposals  roused  in  America. 
To  a  people,  most  of  whom  had  never  been  even  asked  for  any 
taxes  beyond  their  local  levies,  few  of  whom  had  paid  even 
the  quitrents  to  which  the  holding  of  their  land  obligated 
them  with  any  regularity  and  without  constant  protest,  the 
proposal  to  establish  a  series  of  taxes,  however  mild  and 
judicious,  could  not  fail  to  be  regarded  as  an  innovation 
deserving  of  the  keenest  scrutiny.  And  the  purposes  for 
which  this  revenue  was  to  be  spent  were  undoubtedly  of 
questionable  expediency.  The  institution  of  a  uniform  cen 
tralized  administration  for  all  the  colonies,  directed  by  the 
English  ministry,  composed  of  officers  whom  they  appointed 
and  paid,  certainly  involved  the  complete  overthrow  of  the 
system  of  government  which  had  been  in  existence  ever  since 
the  colonies  were  founded.  The  colonial  legislatures  had  been 
practically  supreme  and  had  directed  and  controlled  the  Eng 
lish  governors  with  little  regard  for  the  technicalities  of 
constitutional  law,  for  instructions  from  kings,  or  for  pro 
tests  from  the  Board  of  Trade  and  Plantations.  Each  legis 
lature  had  tightly  drawn  the  strings  of  the  colonial  purse 
and  had  never  paid  a  penny  to  an  English  appointee  with 
out  first  being  assured  of  his  performance  of  their  wishes. 
The  colonies  had  virtually  controlled  their  own  policies  and 
their  own  legislation,  and,  realizing,  as  the  Massachusetts 
men  told  the  Commissioners  of  Charles  II,  that  they  could 
" easily  spin  out  seven  years  by  writing,"  had  recked  little 
of  English  policies  and  royal  displeasure.  Undoubtedly,  the 


80  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

colonies  had  passed  a  vast  number  of  conflicting  regulations; 
the  franchise,  taxation,  local  government,  the  criminal  and 
civil  codes  were  alike  only  in  their  fundamental  notions,  and 
interposed  a  very  real  barrier  in  the  way  of  administrative 
efficiency  as  the  English  understood  it.  Yet  these  same  local 
peculiarities  were  regarded  by  the  colonists  in  1765  as  the 
most  characteristic  and  admirable  feature  of  American  de 
velopment.  Each  little  community  was  eager  to  preserve  in 
tact  the  right  to  adapt  itself  to  such  exigencies  of  its  economic 
and  political  needs  as  the  practical  demands  of  the  moment 
might  dictate.  Uniform  regulations  were  suited  to  uniform 
conditions;  a  single  policy  to  a  people  whose  interests  and 
aims  were  identical;  but  were  highly  inexpedient  for  thirteen 
communities  whose  dissimilarities  were  more  striking  than  the 
similarities.  The  majority  of  Americans,  in  fact,  did  not 
believe  a  uniform  administration  desirable  or  possible.  Had 
their  fathers  struggled  hard  to  avoid  paying  the  governor  a 
fixed  salary  and  to  prevent  the  regular  collection  of  the 
proprietor's  rents,  that  they  might  yield  the  control  of  the 
purse  without  a  protest?  Had  their  fathers  overthrown  An- 
dros,  negatived  every  English  plan  of  organic  union  to  cling 
fast  to  the  idea  of  a  league  of  sovereign  States,  only  that 
the  sons  might  in  their  folly  permit  the  establishment  of  the 
very  type  of  government  which  their  fathers  had  deemed 
inexpedient?  Had  the  work  of  the  legislatures  ever  been 
so  inefficient,  had  the  royal  governors  ever  demonstrated  such 
conspicuous  ability  as  to  justify  the  transfer  of  the  real 
direction  of  colonial  administration  from  the  one  to  the 
other?  Nor  could  the  colonists  believe  that  a  standing  army 
in  America,  instituted  at  the  very  moment  when  the  real 
dangers  of  the  past  century  were  clearly  at  an  end,  could 
be  intended  to  cope  with  anything  but  the  resistance  of  the 
colonists  themselves  to  the  new  arrangements.  Whatever 
pleas  for  a  new  and  more  glorious  British  Empire  might  be 
used  to  lend  a  specious  splendor  to  such  proposals,  their 
acceptance  certainly  meant  the  renunciation  of  the  virtual 


THE  IMMEDIATE  CAUSES  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  81 

sovereignty   and   independence   which   each   colony  had   un 
doubtedly  enjoyed  ever  since  it  had  been  founded. 

If  the  administrative  result  of  the  English  reforms  would 
be  the  overthrow  of  local  administration,  the  economic  re 
sults  certainly  threatened  to  bankrupt  the  colonies.  An 
efficient  central  government  meant  the  actual  enforcement  of 
the  Navigation  and  Sugar  Acts,  and  meant  the  cessation  of 
the  lucrative  smuggling  trade  with  the  foreign  sugar  colonies 
on  which  the  very  prosperity  of  the  continental  colonies  was 
believed  to  rest.2  The  Sugar  Act  of  1733  had  been  intended 
to  prevent  the  direct  importation  by  the  continental  colo 
nies  of  molasses,  rum,  or  sugar  from  the  foreign  West  India 
Islands  and  had  imposed  customs  duties  meant  to  be  pro 
hibitive  and  penalties  for  evasion  believed  to  be  severe  enough 
to  intimidate  offenders.  Yet,  from  the  first,  the  Act  was 
null  and  void  in  America.  Sugar  had  been  openly  sold  in 
Boston  for  less  than  the  duty  and  the  English  government 
had  with  difficulty  collected  £2000  of  revenue  annually  at 
an  expenditure  of  £7000  for  perception.  The  Sugar  Act  of 
1764,  by  far  the  most  offensive  of  all  pre-revolutionary  acts, 
made  the  Act  of  1733  perpetual,  increased  the  amount  of  the 
duties  and  the  severity  of  the  penalties,  and  provided  for 
the  exercise  by  English  naval  and  customs  authorities  of 
such  plenary  powers  for  the  detection  and  punishment  of 

2  The  Sugar  Act  of  1764  "will  put  a  total  stop  to  our  exportation  of 
lumber,  horses,  flour,  and  fish,  to  the  French  and  Dutch  sugar  colonies; 
and  if  any  one  supposes  we  may  find  a  sufficient  vent  for  these  articles 
in  the  English  Islands  in  the  West  Indies,  he  only  verifies  what  was 
just  now  observed,  that  he  wants  truer  information.  Putting  an  end 
to  the  importation  of  foreign  molasses,  at  the  same  time  puts  an  end  to 
all  the  costly  distilleries  in  these  colonies,  and  to  the  rum  trade  to  the 
coast  of  Africa,  and  throws  it  into  the  hands  of  the  French.  With 
the  loss  of  the  foreign  molasses  trade  the  codfishery  of  the  English  in 
America  must  also  be  lost  and  thrown  also  into  the  hands  of  the 
French.  .  .  .  This,  nor  any  part  of  it,  is  not  exaggeration  but  a  sober 
and  most  melancholy  truth.  .  .  .  Ministers  have  great  influence  and 
parliaments  great  power:  can  either  of  them  change  the  nature  of 
things,  stop  all  our  means  of  getting  money  and  yet  expect  us  to  pur 
chase  and  pay  for  British  manufactures?"  Stephen  Hopkins,  The  Rights 
of  Colonies  Examined,  12,  13.  (1765.) 


82  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

offenses  as  are  now  exercised  by  the  United  States  Revenue 
officers.  To  this,  the  colonists  paid  and  intended  to  pay  no 
more  attention  than  they  had  always  paid  to  English 
acts  which  seemed  detrimental  to  their  welfare. 

To  their  wrath  and  astonishment,  however,  the  English 
ministry  promptly  evinced  a  hitherto  unheard  of  amount  of 
energy  and  decision,  and  introduced  first  a  Stamp  Act  and 
then  various  revenue  bills  to  raise  money  to  maintain  in 
America  an  administrative  and  military  corps  capable  of 
enforcing  the  Navigation  Acts,  new  and  old.  The  Stamp 
Tax  was  not  indeed  a  bad  form  of  taxation  and  was  then  in 
operation  in  England  without  objection,  and  has  since  been 
frequently  used  in  the  United  States;  the  duties  were  ex 
tremely  moderate,  and  all  the  varieties  of  commercial  paper 
which  the  ordinary  man  was  likely  to  handle  were  exempted 
altogether.  The  opposition  in  America  came  from  the  clear 
evidence  afforded  by  the  Act  itself  of  the  purpose  of  its 
passage.  The  Commissioners  were  to  be  appointed  by  the 
Crown;  their  powers  were  broad,  their  discretion  unlimited; 
the  culprits  could  at  discretion  be  tried  outside  their  own 
colony  by  an  Admiralty  judge,  sitting  of  course  without  a 
jury,  and  proceeding  by  the  rules  of  the  Admiralty  law, 
instead  of  by  common  law.  In  addition,  the  duties  were 
payable  only  in  sterling  money  at  London  rates;  the  colo 
nists,  long  hampered  by  the  scarcity  of  coin  in  America, 
declared  it  a  conspiracy  to  strip  the  country  of  specie. 

The  purpose  and  not  the  tenor  of  the  Stamp  Act  was  as 
much  responsible  for  the  opposition  in  America  as  it  was 
for  the  satisfaction  in  England.  There  can  be  little  doubt 
that  the  mercantile  community  on  either  side  of  the  Atlantic 
was  responsible  as  much  for  the  policy  of  centralization  as 
for  that  of  resistance.  Both  were  actuated  by  the  fear  of 
bankruptcy.  So  long  as  the  carrying  trade  between  England 
and  her  own  sugar  colonies  could  be  restricted  to  her  own 
colonial  shipping,  so  long  as  the  continental  colonies  supplied 
the  English  colonies  with  food  and  necessities  and  compelled 
the  foreign  sugar  colonies  to  divert  valuable  time  and  labor 


THE  IMMEDIATE  CAUSES  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  83 

from  raising  sugar-cane  to  raising  food  for  their  own  mainte 
nance,  the  English  sugar  colonies  possessed  a  very  consider 
able  economic  advantage  over  their  rivals.  For  the  conti 
nental  colonies  to  supply  the  latter  with  food  on  the  same 
terms  at  which  they  supplied  the  English  sugar  colonies 
meant  the  loss  of  this  very  important  advantage.  "When, 
in  addition,  the  New  England  merchants  traded  freely  with 
Amsterdam  and  Hamburg  and  took  back  to  America  Dutch 
or  German  goods,  the  English  merchants  in  England  had 
lost  just  so  much  of  their  normal  market.  The  pressure  upon 
the  ministry  to  put  an  end  to  this  "robbery"  was  persistent, 
and,  from  an  English  point  of  view,  entirely  justifiable. 
That  the  repression  of  this  illicit  trade  and  open  smuggling 
was  oppression,  never  occurred  to  George  III  and  his  advisers. 
But  the  Boston  and  New  York  merchants,  who  remembered 
that  the  English  West  India  Islands  consumed  each  decade  a 
smaller  and  smaller  proportion  of  their  produce,  and  furnished 
fewer  and  fewer  of  their  numerous  ships  with  full  cargoes 
to  London,  who  realized  that  their  profits  depended  on  their 
ability  to  market  the  whole  of  the  colonial  output  some 
where  and  that  the  only  possible  additional  market  for  bulky 
and  perishable  goods  was  in  the  foreign  West  India  colonies,3 
saw  in  these  regulations  nothing  but  a  fixed  design  to  strangle 
colonial  trade  and  to  ruin  colonial  merchants  simply  in  order 

s  The  Remonstrance  of  the  Colony  of  Rhode  Island  to  the  Lords  Com 
missioners  of  Trade  and  Plantations  against  the  Sugar  Act  of  1764 
stated  that  Rhode  Island  imported  annually  £120,000  of  British  goods 
and  raised  in  the  colony  £5000  worth  of  goods  capable  of  being  sent  to 
England,  "and,  as  the  other  goods  raised  for  exportation,  will  answer 
in  no  market  but  in  the  West  Indies,  it  necessarily  follows  that  the 
trade  thither  must  be  the  foundation  of  all  our  commerce."  Thirty 
distilleries  turning  molasses  into  rum  are  "the  main  hinge  upon  which 
the  trade  of  the  colony  depends,"  and  use  14,000  hogsheads  of  molasses 
annually,  of  which  11,500  come  from  foreign  sugar  plantations  (of 
course  in  inviolation  of  the  Navigation  Acts).  "The  British  West  India 
Islands  are  not,  nor  in  the  nature  of  things  ever  can  be,  able  to  consume 
the  produce  of  the  said  colonies."  To  Africa,  the  colony  annually  ex 
ported  1800  hogsheads  of  rum  and  with  the  proceeds  made  remittances 
to  England  valued  at  £40,000.  Records  of  the  Colony  of  Rhode  Island 
and  Providence  Plantations,  in  New  England,  VI,  378-383. 


84  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

to  increase  the  profits  of  British  merchants.  The  fact  that 
this  trade  was  necessary  to  colonial  prosperity  proved  to  the 
Americans  that  the  English  statutes  and  regulations  were 
exceedingly  unjust,  and  were,  therefore,  illegal  and  unconsti 
tutional.  Parliament  never  could  have  intended  to  commit 
such  hideous  injustice;  any  such  reading  of  the  acts  must  be 
wrong.  The  continued  insistence  of  the  English  ministers 
upon  this  very  interpretation,  the  passage  of  further  acts  and 
regulations  to  enforce  it  seemed  to  prove  only  too  clearly 
that  England  actually  intended  to  compass  the  ruin  of  her 
own  colonies.  "Single  acts  of  tyranny/'  wrote  Jefferson 
in  the  Summary  View  of  the  Rights  of  British  America,  "may 
be  ascribed  to  the  accidental  opinion  of  a  day ;  but  a  series  of 
oppressions,  begun  at  a  distinguished  period,  and  pursued 
unalterably  through  every  change  of  ministers,  too  plainly 
prove  a  deliberate  and  systematical  plan  of  reducing  us  to 
slavery."  The  growth  of  the  colonies  had  developed  by  1760 
an  economic  interest  diametrically  contrary  to  the  interests 
of  England,  and  over  its  continuance,  not  over  its  rightfulness, 
the  Revolution  was  fought.  The  Americans  conceived  the 
economic  bondage  to  Europe,  which  pressed  so  hardly  on  them, 
to  be  the  result  of  the  political  tie  which  bound  them  to 
the  mother-country;  if  that  tie  were  once  loosened  or  could 
be  changed,  all  would  be  remedied.  When  they  found  it 
impossible  to  alter  the  conditions  which  so  hampered  their 
development,  they  determined  to  get  rid  of  the  political  con 
nection  entirely  and  thus  become  free. 

The  prompt  nullification  of  the  Stamp  Act  by  the  Ameri 
cans  only  convinced  George  III  and  his  advisers  the  more 
firmly  of  the  necessity  of  such  measures.  They  knew  little 
of  the  commercial  necessities  of  the  continental  colonists; 
still  less  of  the  actual  facts  about  colonial  self-government. 
They  correctly  saw  that  the  conditions  in  America  were 
entirely  at  odds  with  the  legal  and  constitutional  relation 
ship  between  the  mother-country  and  her  colonies;  they  cor 
rectly  saw  that  if  the  authority  of  the  Crown  and  of  Parlia 
ment  was  not  to  become  a  mere  figment  of  the  imagination 


THE  IMMEDIATE  CAUSES  OF  THE  REVOLUTION     85 

recognition  of  it  must  be  extorted  from  the  colonies  as  soon 
as  possible.  With  the  cooperation  of  the  colonies,  a  magnifi 
cent  future  lay  before  the  British  Empire;  but  until  so 
anomalous  a  condition  of  affairs  was  changed,  cooperation 
would  be  impossible.  As  Wilson  later  phrased  it  in  the 
Constitutional  Convention  of  1787,  "The  fatal  maxims  es 
poused  by  her  were  that  the  Colonies  were  growing  too  fast 
and  that  their  growth  must  be  stinted  [checked]  in  time." 

Accordingly,  in  June  1766,  Townshend  announced  the  policy 
of  the  ministry.  "It  has  long  been  my  opinion  that  America 
should  be  regulated  and  deprived  of  its  militating  and  con 
tradictory  charters,  and  its  royal  governors,  judges,  and  at 
torneys  be  rendered  independent  of  the  people.  I  there 
fore  expect  that  the  present  administration  will,  in  the  recess 
of  Parliament,  take  all  necessary  previous  steps  for  compass 
ing  so  desirable  an  event."  There  would  be  "a  different 
police  (policy)  founded  on  and  supported  by  force  and 
vigor."  With  these  words  ringing  in  their  ears,  the  Ameri 
cans  learned  of  the  proposed  organization  of  a  really  effi 
cient  American  customs  service,  of  the  imposition  of  duties 
on  glass,  painters'  colors,  and  tea,  all  to  make  "more  certain 
and  adequate  provision  for  the  charge  of  the  administration 
of  justice  and  the  support  of  civil  government"  in  America, 
and  to  be  spent  by  the  English  ministry.  The  low  duties, 
the  studiously  careful  taxation  of  nothing  but  luxuries,  the 
excellence  of  the  provisions  for  administrative  efficiency,  the 
fact  that  the  Tea  Acts  permitted  the  sale  of  tea  in  America 
from  30%  to  40%  cheaper  than  in  England  was  nothing  to 
the  Americans,  who  were,  as  always,  furiously  opposed  to 
the  payment  of  any  taxes  at  all  intended  to  make  the  Eng 
lish  officials  independent  of  the  colony,  and  firm  in  their 
opposition  to  the  establishment  of  an  efficient  English  ad 
ministration.  Was  this  to  be  the  result  of  the  long  battle 
between  Massachusetts  and  the  Crown  over  the  Governor's 
salary?  Was  Massachusetts  thus  tamely  to  surrender  and 
make  him  independent  of  her  legislature?  Were  the  colo 
nies  themselves  to  pay  the  money  necessary  for  the  creation 


86  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

of  an  administration  intended  to  destroy  their  prosperity 
by  enforcing  the  Navigation  Acts?  The  reorganization  of 
the  Admiralty  courts,  the  legalization  of  general  search-war 
rants  for  smuggled  goods,  the  new  efficiency  of  the  English 
army  in  the  colonies  only  increased  the  dangers  apprehended 
from  such  measures  by  the  extent  to  which  they  rendered  the 
proposed  administration  more  efficient. 

The  resistance  was  prompt  and  for  the  most  part  was  a 
resort  to  the  old  habits  of  evasion  and  violence  so  common 
in  the  relations  of  the  populace  and  the  customs  officers. 
The  breaking  of  heads,  burning  in  effigy,  riding  on  rails, 
the  sacking  of  houses,  the  forcible  landing  of  goods  in  defi 
ance  of  the  revenue  officers  were  as  old  as  the  colonies  them 
selves.  Conscious  of  their  strength,  the  crowds  indulged  in 
more  striking  manifestations  of  their  determination,  dancing 
round  liberty-poles,  burying  the  Stamp  Act  with  mock 
gravity,  and  boycotting  or  threatening  the  English  officers 
till  they  left  the  colony.  There  was  here  no  organized  re 
sistance  ;  the  participants  belonged  to  the  poorer  and  rougher 
elements  of  the  populace;  and  their  deeds  were  openly  dep 
recated  by  the  colonial  leaders  and  legislatures.  In  fact, 
few  were  anxious  to  do  more  than  nullify  the  English  acts 
or  supposed  that  such  proceedings  could  lead  to  a  separation 
from  the  mother-country.  "The  ideas  of  people,"  wrote 
John  Adams,  "are  as  various  as  their  faces." 

There  was,  however,  for  the  first  time  talk  among  the 
leaders  of  legal  or  constitutional  resistance  to  the  English 
measures  and  a  great  turning  of  books  and  consideration  of 
precedents  to  discover  what  the  legal  relations  of  the  colo 
nies  to  England  really  were.  Firm  in  their  English  tradi 
tions,  the  Americans  refused  to  believe  that  the  law  obligated 
them  to  the  performance  of  anything  actually  detrimental 
to  their  welfare.  Out  of  the  voluminous  correspondence, 
speech-making,  and  tract-writing,  there  finally  appeared  about 
1774,  a  coherent  American  notion  of  what  the  British  Consti 
tution  was  and  what  were  the  privileges  of  the  colonies  under 
it.  In  the  writings  of  James  Otis  and  of  Stephen  Hopkins, 


THE  IMMEDIATE  CAUSES  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  87 

we  find  it  clearly  expressed,  but,  above  all,  we  see  it  in  the 
Summary  View  of  the  Eights  of  British  America,  written  by 
Thomas  Jefferson  in  1774. 

The  Americans  assumed  the  existence  of  an  English  Con 
stitution  superior  in  obligation  to  acts  of  Parliament,  based 
upon  an  original  compact  between  the  King  and  people  and 
containing  "  those  rights  which  God  and  the  laws  have  given 
equally  and  independently  to  all.'*  The  British  Empire  con 
sisted  of  England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  Massachusetts,  Virginia, 
and  the  rest  of  the  colonies,  all  of  them  equal  in  rank,  each 
provided  with  a  legislature  and  an  administration  supreme 
within  its  own  sphere.  The  King  was,  as  Jefferson  said, 
" chief  magistrate  of  the  British  Empire,"  "the  chief  officer 
of  the  people,  appointed  by  the  laws  and  circumscribed  with 
definite  powers,  to  assist  in  working  the  great  machine  of 
government,  created  for  their  use  and  consequently  subject 
to  their  superintendence."  The  King  was  of  course  subject 
to  the  Constitution;  Parliament  was  the  legislature  of  Eng 
land  as  the  General  Court  was  the  legislature  of  Massachusetts 
or  the  General  Assembly  that  of  Virginia.  Parliament  pos 
sessed  by  the  Constitution  no  more  right  to  legislate  for  Mas 
sachusetts  than  the  General  Court  possessed  to  pass  laws  for 
England.  The  right  of  free  trade  was  the  inalienable  pos 
session  of  each  "part  of  the  Empire";  the  Constitution  sanc 
tioned  no  laws  whatever  on  that  subject,  and  all  those  passed 
by  Parliament,  being  therefore  in  contravention  of  the  Con 
stitution,  were  void. 

Such  notions  obviously  bore  no  relation  whatever  to  any 
conceptions  of  the  English  constitution  ever  entertained  in 
England.  That  Americans  should  advance  what  George  and 
his  counselors  deemed  ludicrous  travesties  as  constitutional 
defenses  for  their  extraordinary  behavior,  only  confirmed 
the  latter  in  their  opinion  of  the  "factious"  intentions  of 
the  Americans.  The  American  notions  were,  however,  the 
logical  result  of  the  application  of  States'  sovereignty  to  the 
British  Empire ;  and  were  simply  a  plain  statement  of  actual 
conditions  in  1774.  The  separate  States  were  sovereign  and 


88  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

recognized  the  King's  headship  of  the  Empire  for  what  it 
had  been, — an  ornamental  constitutional  feature.  They  as 
signed  both  King  and  Parliament  purely  nominal  parts  be 
cause  neither  had  ever  regularly  exercised  any  actual  author 
ity  in  America.  But  neither  King  nor  colonist  realized  that 
the  difficulty  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  legal  status  and  the 
actual  condition  of  the  colonies  no  longer  agreed.  The  Eng 
lish  concluded  that,  because  the  law  said  so,  they  were  still 
dependencies  to  be  dealt  with  at  the  discretion  of  King  and 
Parliament;  the  Americans  assumed  that  the  Constitution 
must  have  been  always  in  force  and  obtained  their  definition 
of  the  Constitution  from  what  they  knew  to  be  true  about 
government  in  America  and  about  the  actual  relations  of  the 
colonies  to  England.  Both  the  English  idea  of  American 
government,  and  the  American  idea  of  English  government 
were  therefore  astonishing  misconceptions.  And  each  firmly 
believed  in  his  own  particular  variety  of  misconception  be 
cause  the  facts  of  everyday  life  with  which  each  was  familiar 
proved  its  validity;  each  scouted  the  other's  notions  be 
cause  neither  could  credit  the  existence  of  such  conditions 
as  were  claimed  to  be  found  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic. 
How  were  Charles  James  Fox,  rake  and  gamester,  wit  and 
litterateur,  the  stolid  Farmer  George,  the  routine-ridden  Graf- 
tons  and  Townshends  to  comprehend  life  on  the  American 
frontier  or  to  appreciate  the  virtues  of  a  "Washington  or  the 
ability  of  a  Franklin?  The  personal  experiences  of  the 
leaders  had  been  too  utterly  diverse  for  them  to  comprehend 
the  motives  which  swayed  their  opponents. 

Starting  from  such  opposite  premises,  argument  and  dis 
cussion  only  intensified  the  differences  of  opinion  and  con 
vinced  each  of  the  other's  wilful  intention  to  falsify  and 
misrepresent.  The  little  phrase,  "  taxation  without  represen 
tation,  "  which  soon  became  the  decisive  point  of  most  prac 
tical  discussions,  was  clearly  understood  by  each  in  a  sense 
which  made  nonsense  out  of  the  other's  contentions.  The 
English  Parliament  was  elected  by  the  counties  and  such 
boroughs  as  had  always  had  the  right  to  send.  In  them,  the 


THE  IMMEDIATE  CAUSES  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  89 

franchise  was  based  upon  a  variety  of  accidental  and  in 
consistent  notions,  completely  lacking  in  regularity.  Many 
great  cities  were  not  represented ;  many  rich  men  had  no  vote ; 
while  tiny  hamlets  and  barren  hillsides  returned  two  mem 
bers  to  Parliament,  and  more  than  one  nobleman  and  wealthy 
landowner  returned  a  score.  A  majority  of  the  House  of 
Commons  were  put  in  their  seats  by  about  two  hundred  and 
fifty  individuals.  Thus  Parliament  did  not  contain  a  single 
member  who  represented  any  uniformity  of  qualification  of 
any  sort.  Nor,  as  Edmund  Burke  told  the  Electors  of  Bristol, 
was  that  important.  He  was  not  their  member  and  what  they 
thought  or  wanted  was  naught  to  him;  he  and  every  other 
member  sat  for  all  England,  for  the  men  who  did  not  vote 
and  for  the  boroughs  which  sent  no  members,  as  much  as  for 
the  few  men  who  voted.  Parliament  legally  represented  every 
man,  woman,  and  child  in  England,  and  whatever  it  did  was 
law  beyond  appeal.  Any  one  taxed  by  Parliament,  was  le 
gally  taxed.  Such  was  and  still  is  the  theory  of  the  English 
Constitution. 

In  America,  on  the  other  hand,  the  franchise  was  uniform, 
though  not  everywhere  the  same;  while  nearly  every  colony 
demanded  property  and  moral  or  religious  qualifications, 
every  man  might  hope  to  fulfil  them.  The  apportionment  in 
America  was  strictly  according  to  population  and  was  regu 
larly  changed  to  keep  pace  with  its  ebb  and  flow.  There  was, 
therefore,  in  America  no  idea  whatever  that  an  individual 
or  a  town  could  be  vicariously  represented;  if  the  man  or 
town  deserved  representation,  it  would  be  freely  accorded. 
To  say,  therefore,  that  the  colonies  had  a  perfect  right  to 
representation  and  were  in  fact  already  represented  in  Parlia 
ment,  sounded  to  the  Americans  like  nonsense,  while  the 
American  claim  to  be  taxed  only  by  a  body  of  men  for  one 
of  whom  he  or  his  town  had  voted  seemed  to  Englishmen 
worse  than  presumption. 

One  bit  of  American  logic  particularly  irritated  the  English 
men  and  seemed  to  them  most  cogent  proof  that  the  Ameri 
cans  were  wrong  and  knew  it.  The  latter,  entirely  ignorant 


90  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

of  English  conditions,  save  of  course  for  the  better  informed 
who  were  promptly  stigmatized  as  Tories,  kept  insisting 
loudly  that  they  were  "justly  entitled  to  like  privileges  and 
freedom  as  their  fellow-subjects  in  Great  Britain."  Magna 
Carta  declared  against  taxation  without  representation,  and, 
despite  it,  Parliament,  in  which  they  were  not  represented, 
persisted  in  levying  taxes.  But,  as  William  Knox  keenly 
said,  if  they  had  been  living  in  England,  would  they  not  have 
been  bound  by  Acts  of  Parliament,  would  they  not  have  been 
deemed  fully  represented?  Should  they  claim  all  the  rights 
of  Englishmen  in  England  and  shirk  their  duties?  Should 
they  be  awarded  the  privileges  without  assuming  the  obliga 
tions  ? 

If  we  start  from  the  obviously  correct  notions  of  the  legal 
relationship  prevalent  in  England,  we  shall  agree  with  George 
and  his  ministers  that  the  measures  they  proposed  were  emi 
nently  just,  equitable,  and  moderate.  "We  shall  perforce  ac 
quit  them  and  the  English  people  of  any  intention  of  tyran 
nizing  over  the  colonies,  of  imposing  any  formal  or  legal  ob 
ligations  not  binding  on  Englishmen  in  England,  of  demand 
ing  any  type  of  taxes  not  long  collected  in  England,  of  levy 
ing  sums  in  excess  of  those  laid  upon  the  English  themselves. 
Constitutional  arguments  have,  however,  rarely  succeeded  in 
adjusting  the  legal  and  political  fabric  to  conditions  mani 
festly  antagonistic.  The  real  issues  were  not  constitutional 
but  economic  and  administrative,  and  concerned  not  law  but 
expediency.  Did  the  continental  colonies  need  a  larger 
market  than  the  English  sugar  colonies  offered?  Was  it  not 
most  inexpedient  for  them  to  consent  to  taxes  and  regula 
tions  which  proposed  to  enforce  a  policy  which  they  believed 
certain  to  result  in  the  destruction  of  their  prosperity  ?  Both 
issues  were  old  and  the  colonies,  individually  and  collectively, 
had  invariably  answered  both  in  the  affirmative.  The  Revolu 
tion  did  not  grow  out  of  new  issues  and  new  claims.  The 
colonies  merely  reaffirmed  with  emphasis  the  position  they  had 
already  many  times  assumed.  The  justification  of  the 
American  Revolution  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  colonies  were 


THE  IMMEDIATE  CAUSES  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  91 

strong  enough  to  stand  alone,  had  governed  themselves  suc 
cessfully  for  a  century  and  more,  and  could  see  no  economic, 
ethical,  or  constitutional  advantages  in  such  a  connection  as 
the  English  proposed.  Whatever  the  law  was,  they  were  in 
fact  free  agents,  sovereign  powers,  able  to  accept  or  reject 
measures  and  policies  as  they  thought  best.  The  logic  of 
facts  was  with  them;  the  law  as  they  honestly  understood  it 
supported  them;  they  asked  for  nothing  which  their  fathers 
had  not  in  substance  possessed.  They  were  free  and  they 
claimed  the  right  to  make  the  fact  clear. 


VIII 
THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RESISTANCE 

ARMED  resistance  was  by  no  means  the  result  of  a  spon 
taneous  outburst  of  indignation  from  a  united  nation.  In 
deed,  the  candid  student,  who  will  read  the  documentary  evi 
dence  with  the  colonial  passion  for  States'  sovereignty  in  his 
mind  instead  of  the  national  ideals  of  the  Federal  Convention, 
will  be  compelled  to  admit,  unpalatable  as  the  fact  may  be, 
that  the  Revolution  was  not  a  national  movement  at  all.  Loy 
alty  and  devotion  to  the  States  was  strong,  fervid,  and 
freely  expressed ;  the  determination  to  maintain  with  force,  if 
necessary,  each  State's  independence  of  England  was  un 
questioned.  But  both  were  as  old  as  the  colonies:  in  1634 
and  1664  Massachusetts  had  manifested  precisely  that  same 
determination.  Of  national  feeling  in  the  present  sense,  there 
seems  to  have  been  among  the  people  in  general  very  little,  and 
that  little  was  manifested  only  by  individuals.  At  the  Stamp 
Act  Congress  and  all  other  gatherings  of  men  from  more  than 
one  colony,  the  sentiment  in  favor  of  complaint  was  strong, 
but  that  in  favor  of  united  action  was  weak.  The  advocates 
of  a  central  colonial  government  of  some  sort  were  listened 
to  with  tolerance  but  hardly  with  approval.  Was  not  a  cen 
tral  administration,  robbing  the  individual  colonies  of  part  of 
their  power  and  initiative,  the  very  thing  against  which  they 
were  protesting? 

Among  the  colonial  leaders  a  strong  party  counseled  de 
lay.  Franklin  pointed  at  the  rapid  growth  of  the  colonies  in 
wealth  and  population  since  1760  and  predicted  that  if  war 
could  be  averted  for  another  decade  or  two  the  very  growth 
of  the  colonies  would  totally  change  English  policy.  "Our 
security  lies  in  our  growing  strength,  England  will  soon  value 

92 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RESISTANCE  93 

our  friendship  for  it."  "Bear  England's  infirmities  a  little 
and  gradually  they  will  come  to  treat  us  well."  The  com 
mercial  relations  with  England  were  too  valuable  and  too 
necessary  to  the  prosperity  of  the  colonies  to  risk  their  rupture 
by  a  war.  ' '  England  is  worth  preserving  and  her  safety  may 
in  a  large  degree  depend  upon  ourselves.  Hence  she  must 
soon  grant  us  all."  Nor  was  actual  fighting  necessary.  The 
English  were  prevented  by  circumstances  too  fundamental  ever 
to  be  changed  from  exercising  a  control  over  the  colonies  suf 
ficiently  effective  to  rob  them  of  the  actual  independence 
which  had  so  long  been  theirs.  George  III  and  his  ministers 
must  soon  realize  how  insuperable  a  barrier  the  width  of  the 
Atlantic  actually  was.  In  fact,  the  belief  was  very  general 
before  1775  that  organized  resistance  would  not  be  necessary. 
It  is  hard  for  us  to  remember  that  in  1768  most  colonists 
felt  for  "The  King"  fervent  loyalty,  which  was  not  infre 
quently  coupled  to  an  active  dislike  for  George  III  and  which 
has  been  often  confused  with  a  lack  of  patriotism  to  their 
own  country.  They  still  thought  as  their  fathers  had,  and 
saw  not  the  slightest  incompatibility  between  a  desire  to  cling 
to  the  mother-country  as  long  as  possible  and  a  firm  determi 
nation  to  disobey  all  rules  and  regulations  which  they  did  not 
approve.  They  saw  the  familiar  aspects  of  the  old  colonial 
quarrels  with  England,  realized  that  their  fathers  had  found 
petitions,  vigorous  protests,  and  a  nullification  of  the  ob 
jectionable  acts  by  passive  resistance  invariably  effective,  and 
they  were  naturally  unwilling  to  go  further  without  more 
serious  provocation.  England  had  hitherto  never  done  any 
thing  more  than  insist,  and,  if  they  vigorously  wrote  and 
talked,  they  might  in  the  meantime  have  their  own  way.  The 
landing  of  troops  at  New  York  in  1765  and  at  Boston  three 
years  later  somewhat  shook  their  complaisance,  but  as  the 
months  passed  by  and  found  the  trade  with  the  foreign  West 
India  Islands  still  brisk  and  profitable,  as  the  obnoxious  new 
acts  were  promptly  repealed,  and  the  older  ones  not  enforced, 
the  average  man  saw  no  need  for  action. 

In  John  Dickinson's  Farmer's  Letters  published  in  1768 


04  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

we  find  those  ideas  which  seem  to  have  most  nearly  expressed 
the  views  of  the  vast  majority  of  the  people.  Of  the  un justi 
fiability  of  English  policy,  he  has  no  doubt;  but  he  cannot 
think  it  represents  the  mature  opinion  of  King  and  people. 
"I  cannot  yet  believe  they  will  be  cruel  or  unjust.  .  .  .  Let 
us  complain  .  .  .  but  let  our  complaint  speak  .  .  .  the  lan 
guage  of  affliction  and  veneration. ' '  He  dilated  upon  the  value 
and  importance  of  England  to  the  colonies:  "The  prosperity 
of  these  provinces  is  founded  in  their  dependence  on  Great 
Britain ;"  the  obvious  economic  dependence  of  America  upon 
England  does  not  seem  to  him  to  prove  necessarily  the  desira 
bility  of  the  English  interpretation  of  the  political  bond,  but 
merely  the  advisability  of  caution,  patience,  forbearance.  In 
fact,  he  denied  that  a  new  issue  was  being  thrust  upon  the 
colonists,  or  that  other  measures  than  passive  resistance  and 
nullification  would  be  necessary  to  meet  the  crisis.  The  im 
portance  of  correctly  estimating  the  attitude  of  Dickinson  and 
his  numerous  supporters  can  hardly  be  exaggerated,  and  we 
must  above  all  beware  of  assuming  that  they  approved  of 
English  policy  or  were  any  less  patriotic  in  their  attachment 
to  their  States  than  were  the  adherents  of  the  War  party,  or 
were  any  less  determined  to  resist  in  the  eventuality  of  the 
failure  of  compromise.  Such  motives  held  the  vast  majority 
of  the  population  inactive  throughout  the  war,  and  led  to  the 
prompt  formation  after  Bunker  Hill  of  a  strong  peace  party, 
opposed  to  the  war  not  because  it  was  wrong,  but  because  it 
was  unnecessary. 

Actual  resistance  previous  to  1775  was,  on  the  whole,  indi 
vidualistic  and  sporadic,  and  had  no  close  connection  that  can 
now  be  traced  with  the  later  movements  for  armed  organized 
resistance  or  for  independence.  The  cases  which  furnished 
Otis  and  Henry  with  the  texts  for  their  famous  speeches  on 
the  Writs  of  Assistance  in  1761  and  on  the  Parsons'  Cause  in 
1763  were  essentially  local  and  the  effect  of  the  speeches  less 
general  than  has  usually  been  supposed.  Neither  led  to  open 
resistance.  The  violent  demonstrations  around  Boston  in  op 
position  to  the  Stamp  Act  and  to  the  Townshend  Acts  were 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RESISTANCE  95 

for  the  most  part  the  work  of  mobs,  whose  actions  were  de 
cried  and  discountenanced  by  the  leaders.  A  press  gang  went 
ashore  in  Boston  and  had  a  fight  with  the  crowd.  The  revenue 
officers  who  attempted  to  inspect  Hancock's  sloop,  the 
Liberty,  were  locked  up  by  the  crew,  who  landed  the  cargo 
and  made  false  entries  in  the  books  at  the  customs  house. 
The  subsequent  seizure  of  the  vessel  brought  out  the  old  Boston 
gang,  which  had  long  been  accustomed  to  oppose  the  revenue 
officers,  and  which  sacked  the  houses  of  the  inspector  and  con 
troller  of  customs  in  most  approved  fashion.  A  cargo  of  wine 
was  landed  at'  night  in  March  1768  and  escorted  through  the 
streets  by  forty  men  armed  with  bludgeons.  At  Providence  a 
customs  officer  was  tarred  and  feathered,  and  at  Newport  a 
revenue  cutter  was  burned  at  the  dock.  Some  years  later  a 
body  of  men  went  down  Providence  harbor  in  row  boats  and 
burned  the  revenue  cutter  Gaspce  which  was  aground  on  the 
mud  flats.  Such  "opposition"  was  pretty  common  but  was 
not  essentially  different  either  in  purpose  or  degree  from  the 
violence  offered  to  the  revenue  officers  in  America  ever  since 
the  days  of  John  Kandolph,  or  from  that  which  the  English 
revenue  officers  had  to  contend  with  at  the  same  epoch  in 
England  and  Ireland.  Certainly,  these  brawls  were  not  gen 
erally  considered  at  the  time  to  be  steps  towards  independence 
or  even  as  the  first  events  in  armed  resistance. 

There  was  also  a  great  deal  of  violence  growing  out  of  the 
continually  strained  relations  between  the  debtor  and  creditor 
classes  of  the  community.  Of  these  cases,  that  of  the  North 
Carolina  Regulators  in  1770  is  thoroughly  characteristic.  A 
considerable  body  of  men,  armed  with  clubs,  attended  the 
session  of  the  Superior  Court  and  demanded  from  judge  and 
attorneys,  "justice"  in  the  decision  of  their  cases,  meaning 
apparently  a  decision  in  their  favor.  A  good  many  lawyers 
were  badly  beaten ;  several  gentlemen  of  property  (the  cred 
itors  who  were  trying  to  collect  their  debts)  were  chased  out 
of  town,  and  the  Judge  "took  an  opportunity,"  as  he  wrote 
the  Governor,  of  making  his  escape  "by  a  back  way."  This 
same  determination  to  prevent  the  collection  of  debts  and  the 


96  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

foreclosure  of  mortgages  by  interfering  with  the  sittings  of 
the  courts  was  common  before  the  Revolution,  continued 
throughout  the  war,  and  finally  reached  its  climax  in  the  very 
general  movement  against  the  creditor  class  which  was  one 
of  the  most  prominent  features  of  the  Critical  Period.  Such 
demonstrations  had  vital  results  in  hastening  the  formation  of 
strong  State  governments,  and,  in  particular,  in  producing 
sentiment  in  favor  of  the  strong  national  government  advo 
cated  by  the  Constitutional  Convention  of  1787,  but  they  were 
not  primarily  directed  against  England  nor  against  her  offi 
cials  or  acts. 

Inflammatory  speeches  and  articles  became  common  after 
1765  and  people  talked  energetically  about  "liberty"  and  "in 
dependence."  The  lofty  appeals  of  the  leaders  constitute  a 
distinct  feature  of  these  years,  but  it  is  sufficiently  clear  that 
their  words  in  most  cases  fell  on  deaf  ears.  The  non-importa 
tion  agreements  of  1767  and  1768  roused  more  general  fervor 
than  anything  else,  and  the  demand  from  England  for  the 
rescinding  of  the  Massachusetts  Circular  Letter  of  1768 
caused  a  most  exciting  debate  in  the  Massachusetts  Assembly 
in  which  Otis  compared  the  colonists  to  Pym  and  Cromwell 
and  predicted  that  England  would  lose  America  unless  the 
Acts  were  repealed.  The  Assembly  was  carried  away  by  en 
thusiasm  and  voted,  92  to  17,  not  to  rescind  the  letter.  They 
resolved  that  the  letter  was  modest  and  innocent,  respectful 
to  Parliament  and  dutiful  to  the  King!  The  Governor  next 
day  dissolved  the  legislature.  Throughout  the  colonies,  the 
sensation  was  profound.  Massachusetts  had  openly  defied  the 
Crown.  It  was  just  the  time  when  the  famous  "No.  45"  of 
^Wilkes's  North  Briton  was  so  conspicuous  in  the  agitation  for 
liberty  of  press  in  England;  "92"  and  "45"  became  talis- 
manic  numbers :  92  patriots  drank  45  toasts ;  45  candles  were 
lighted  and  92  cheers  given ;  92  Sons  of  Liberty  set  up  a  pole 
45  feet  high.  The  colonies  generally  resolved  to  support 
Boston,  where  the  enthusiasm  ran  so  high  at  a  mass  meeting 
that  Cooper  and  Samuel  Adams  declared  it  the  most  glorious 
day  they  had  ever  seen.  At  this  juncture,  the  troops  were 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RESISTANCE  97 

ordered  to  Boston,  and,  as  in  1634  and  1664,  the  Town-meet 
ing  voted  "at  the  utmost  peril  of  their  lives  and  fortunes, 
(to)  maintain  and  defend  their  rights,  liberties,  privileges, 
and  immunities. ' '  They  ordered  a  day  of  fasting  and  prayer, 
and  resolved  to  provide  themselves  with  arms  for  fear  of  war 
with  France ! 

Everything  except  a  truly  revolutionary  spirit  had  mani 
fested  itself :  the  traditional  hatred  of  the  water  front  for  the 
press-gang,  the  revenue  officers,  and  the  soldiery;  the  tradi 
tional  opposition  to  an  efficient  executive;  the  war  of  debtor 
against  creditor.  But  this  was  not  revolution.  Resistance 
was  organized  and  the  Revolution  really  foisted  upon  a  reluc 
tant  people  by  the  work  of  Samuel  Adams  and  his  Committees 
of  Correspondence.  Such  committees  were  in  themselves  old 
and  premised  merely  the  cooperation  in  a  common  cause  of 
some  few  towns  around  Boston,  whose  leaders  kept  up  an  in 
defatigable  correspondence  with  individuals  elsewhere.  In 
1763,  self-constituted,  unauthorized  committees  sprang  into 
being  in  many  places  and  began  corresponding  with  each 
other  to  secure  an  interchange  of  sentiments  and,  if  possible, 
an  agreement.  None  of  them  had  any  particular  organiza 
tion,  or  assumed  executive  or  directive  powers.  Most  of  them 
lasted  but  a  short  while,  and  even  in  Massachusetts  there  was 
a  constant  succession  of  committees  rather  than  one  committee 
with  a  permanent  personnel.  Indeed,  by  1772,  no  definite  re 
sults  of  any  sort  were  visible.  * '  The  dispute  between  the  king 
dom  and  the  colonies,"  declared  the  Massachusetts  Gazette, 
"ceases  everywhere  except  in  this  province."  "I  shall  not 
fail  to  exert  myself,"  wrote  a  warm  patriot  in  Plymouth  to 
Adams,  '  *  to  have  as  many  towns  as  possible  meet,  but  fear  the 
bigger  part  of  them  will  not.  They  are  dead;  and  the  dead 
can't  be  raised  without  a  miracle."  This  Adams  did  not  be 
lieve,  yet  even  he  could  not  but  admit  that  "the  people  are  at 
present  hushed  into  silence."  His  cousin,  John  Adams,  wrote : 
' '  They  are  still  and  quiet  at  the  South  and  at  New  York  they 
laugh  at  us. ' '  Hardly  a  year  before  Bunker  Hill,  he  wrote : 
"I  am  of  the  same  opinion  that  I  have  been  for  years,  that 


98  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

there  is  not  spirit  enough  on  either  side  to  bring  the  question 
to  a  complete  decision.  .  .  .  Our  children  may  see  revolutions 
and  be  concerned  and  active  in  effecting  them,  of  which  we 
can  form  no  conception."  There  was,  indeed,  no  general  feel 
ing  in  favor  of  resistance  in  1772,  and,  until  Bunker  Hill  was 
fought,  not  even  the  leaders  dared  to  believe  the  colonies  would 
resist. 

Samuel  Adams  and  those  about  him,  however,  did  not  lose 
heart.  They  had  long  been  prominent  in  Boston  affairs,  had 
usually  controlled  the  town-meeting,  and  were  well  acquainted 
with  the  leading  spirits  of  the  surrounding  towns.  Their  plan 
was  bold :  ' '  I  wish  we  could  rouse  the  continent, ' '  wrote 
Adams.  Still,  he  dared  not  hope  for  the  reality:  "If  our  de 
sign  (for  committees)  succeeds,  there  will  be  an  apparent  union 
of  sentiments  among  the  people  of  this  province,  which  may 
spread  through  the  continent."  Clearly,  no  general  spirit  of 
armed  resistance  was  apparent  to  him  in  1772.  In  November 
of  that  year,  Adams  and  his  supporters  succeeded  finally  in 
carrying  a  vote  by  a  very  narrow  majority  through  a  thinly- 
attended  Boston  town-meeting  for  the  appointment  of  a  com 
mittee  to  correspond  with  other  towns  and  "state  the  rights 
of  the  colonies."  Thus  did  the  men  who  really  began  the 
Revolution  obtain  a  small  grant  of  authority  from  their  timor 
ous  and  grudging  supporters.  Most  of  the  members  of  this 
Boston  Committee,  which  set  the  torch  to  the  bonfire,  are  little 
known,  and  outside  of  Adams,  Otis,  Warren,  and  Quincy,  were 
not  men  of  the  first  ability  nor  of  social  standing  or  wealth. 
John  Adams,  Faneuil,  Hancock,  Gerry,  Paine,  as  yet  declined 
to  countenance  so  radical  a  step.  The  Tories  scoffed  at  the 
Sons  of  Belial  who  came  together  and  asked  each  other, 1 1  What 
can  we  lose?  Peradventure  by  our  craft  we  may  gain  some 
thing."  "And  so  Samuel,  the  Publican  (Adams)  and  Wil 
liam,  the  Scribe  (Cooper)  .  .  .  with  other  the  sons  of  Belial 
set  themselves  to  oppose  Francis,  (Bernard)  the  Governor, 
.  .  .  and  drew  much  people  after  them  and  the  land  was  dis 
quieted. "  Within  a  few  months,  the  Committee  had  clearly 
proved  the  existence  in  a  good  many  towns  of  a  considerable 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RESISTANCE  99 

number  of  men  ready  to  resist,  and,  on  the  strength  of  that,  se 
cured  a  much  more  definite  grant  of  authority  from  the  Boston 
Town-meeting. 

But  the  movement  lacked  numbers  and  needed  an  oppor 
tunity  to  rouse  the  people  by  some  dramatic  act  of  defiance. 
In  1770,  an  attempt  of  the  roughs  of  the  water-front  to  "bait" 
the  redcoats  had  resulted  in  a  scattered  involuntary  fire  from 
the  comrades  of  the  men  assaulted.  There  is  no  reason  to  be 
lieve  that  the  affair  was  anything  more  than  one  of  the  ordi 
nary  rows  then  common  in  garrison  towns ;  but  Adams  and  his 
ilk  put  great  pressure  on  the  governor  to  remove  the  troops 
and  utilized  the  funeral  of  those  killed  for  a  tremendous 
demonstration.  Sober  second  thought  told  the  Bostonians  that 
the  soldiers  were  innocent,  but  Adams  and  his  friends  seized 
upon  the  "Massacre"  as  the  first  blood  spilt  in  the  war  they 
were  predicting  and  held  services  of  commemoration  which 
naturally  became  the  occasion  for  inflammatory  denunciations 
of  English  rule. 

When,  however,  came  from  England  news  of  the  Tea  Act 
of  1773  and  the  determination  of  the  ministry  to  make  the  fate 
of  the  cargoes  consigned  to  the  four  principal  ports  a  test 
of  the  spirit  of  the  colonies,  Adams  realized  that  the  golden 
opportunity  was  at  hand.  A  general  grievance  had  been  pro 
vided  which  by  a  miracle  enabled  Adams  to  put  behind  his 
new  plea  for  resistance  to  England  the  old  established  habit 
of  eluding  the  Navigation  Acts.  The  campaign  against  the  tea 
was  worked  up  by  the  various  committees  with  the  greatest  as 
siduity  in  newspapers,  meetings,  and  alehouses,  and  the  coun 
try  strewn  with  placards.  The  consignees  in  Charleston,  S. 
C.,  resigned  at  the  request  of  a  public  meeting.  But  the  con 
signees  in  Boston  refused  to  resign.  The  Town-meeting  voted 
executive  power  into  the  hands  of  the  Committee  of  Corre 
spondence,  which  called  in  the  committees  of  the  neighboring 
towns,  and  sat  "like  a  little  senate,"  wrote  the  disgusted 
Hutchinson.  The  tea-ships  arrived  on  November  28, 1773,  and, 
after  every  expedient  to  have  them  sent  back  or  to  prevent 
the  landing  of  the  tea  had  failed,  the  Committee  called  a  great 


100  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

meeting  to  take  action.  Opposition  to  violent  measures  was 
expected  and  in  case  the  meeting  refused  to  authorize  the 
destruction  of  the  tea,  a  large  band  of  men,  whose  identity  is 
still  unknown,  were  ready,  disguised  as  Indians,  to  take  mat 
ters  into  their  own  hands.  After  a  long  and  stormy  session 
had  proved  the  opposition  too  strong,  the  signal  was  given; 
the  '  *  Indians ' '  rushed  out  of  the  warehouse  in  which  they  were 
concealed,  whooping  as  they  hurried  toward  the  harbor.  The 
audience  at  the  meeting  and  a  large  part  of  the  population 
who  were  not  at  the  meeting  rushed  after  them,  and  from 
wharves  and  warehouses,  passively  watched  the  " Indians," 
silently  but  rapidly,  dump  the  tea  into  the  harbor  and  dis 
appear. 

As  a  demonstration,  the  Tea  Party  was  an  overwhelming 
success  and  produced  precisely  that  impression  of  organized, 
concerted,  popular  action  which  Adams  had  long  been  most 
anxious  to  give.  The  identity  of  the  opposition  of  the  years 
1760  to  1772  with  the  older  phase  to  which  the  English  had 
long  since  become  accustomed  had  effectually  concealed  from 
them  what  had  been  slowly  coming  to  a  head  in  America. 
The  passivity  of  the  great  majority  of  the  people,  the  lack  of 
united  action  and  of  concerted  effort,  of  numbers  and  of  educa 
tion  and  wealth  among  the  members  of  the  Committees  of 
Correspondence  had  very  naturally  led  the  King,  the  ministry, 
the  mercantile  and  educated  classes  in  England  to  conclude 
that  the  movement  was  the  work  of  a  small  faction  of  radicals, 
whose  stand  was  disapproved  by  the  vast  majority  of  the  peo 
ple.  That  the  vast  majority  of  the  American  people  could 
heartily  disagree  with  Samuel  Adams  and  yet  even  more  ve 
hemently  disagree  with  himself,  seems  never  to  have  occurred 
to  George  III.  The  English,  in  fact,  greatly  exaggerated  the 
numbers  of  their  own  supporters  in  America  and  belittled  the 
extent  of  the  opposition  to  them.  They  supposed,  as  it  is 
rapidly  becoming  the  fashion  to  assume  now,  that  every  man 
not  in  favor  of  armed  resistance  was  a  Tory.  From  the  clear 
evidence  of  colonial  jealousies,  they  concluded  that  active  and 
efficient  cooperation  between  the  colonies  was  out  of  the  ques- 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF,  RE&ISTANC/E  101 

tion.  The  reception  accorded  the  tea  rudely  shook  this  com 
placency.  George  III  declared  that  act  a  subversion  of  the 
Constitution ;  Lord  North  deemed  it  the  culmiriation  of  rioting 
and  confusion,  and  Parliament  solemnly  voted  it  actual  re 
bellion.  Indeed,  the  English  at  last  saw  that  the  Americans 
objected  to  their  acts  and  taxes,  not  because  they  were  un 
just,  but  because  the  Americans  intended  never  to  recognize 
any  such  relationship  to  England  as  those  acts  and  taxes  as 
sumed  to  exist. 

To  take  no  action  was  to  lose  the  colonies  without  an  effort 
for  their  retention,  to  sanction  a  revolution.  Tyranny  was 
not  to  the  taste  of  George  III;  but  a  supine  surrender  of 
what  he  fully  believed  were  the  rights  of  Empire  was  as  little 
to  his  liking.  The  intentions  of  some  Americans  were  clear, 
but  he  could  not  yet  learn  that  more  than  a  handful  had  taken 
any  decided  stand  or  that  the  colonies  were  ready  to  act  to 
gether.  General  Gage  returned  from  America  and  privately 
assured  him  that  ' '  they  will  be  lions  whilst  we  are  lambs ;  but 
if  we  take  the  resolute  part,  they  will  undoubtedly  prove  very 
meek."  The  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  concluded  the  King, 
4 'was  a  fatal  compliance."  So,  in  the  Coercive  Acts  of  1774, 
England  took  "the  resolute  part,"  closed  the  Port  of  Boston 
to  injure  its  trade ;  annulled  the  Massachusetts  Charter  and  in 
stituted  government  by  men  appointed  from  England;  pro 
vided  for  the  trial  in  England  of  men  accused  of  treason,  and 
erected  a  new  province  of  Quebec  that  robbed  all  the  colonies 
of  the  lands  west  of  the  Alleghenies  whose  value  they  had  just 
come  to  realize.  ' '  The  die  is  now  cast, ' '  wrote  George  to  Lord 
North,  "the  Colonies  must  either  submit  or  triumph." 

Had  Samuel  Adams  himself  dictated  the  English  measures, 
he  could  not  have  devised  any  better  calculated  to  rouse  the  in 
different  and  lukewarm  to  the  necessity  for  action  or  which 
would  have  given  him  and  his  colleagues  greater  prestige  and 
authority.  He  made  excellent  use  of  the  varied  motives  now 
working  in  his  favor:  strong  State  patriotism,  love  of  self- 
government,  and  belief  in  States'  sovereignty,  even  if  it  in 
volved  a  breach  with  England ;  the  hatred  of  the  Boston  mob 


102  TKE.RI.SE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

for  the  troops  quarteued  there;  the  traditional  opposition  to 
the  revenue  officers;  the  traditional  determination  not  to  pay 
enough  money  to  the  English  officers  to  render  them  independ 
ent  of  the  colony.  The  Boston  Committee  had  promptly  arro 
gated  to  itself  in  1773  executive  powers  and  now  began  in  1774 
a  persistent  attempt  to  create  and  mold  public  opinion,  and 
to  concert  and  execute  measures  of  resistance.  It  collected 
powder,  lead,  and  muskets;  instituted  companies  of  minute- 
men,  who  drilled  more  or  less  regularly;  and  appointed 
watchers  and  messengers  to  carry  word  of  the  movement  of 
troops  to  the  districts  threatened.  With  the  annulling  of  the 
old  Charter,  the  Boston  Committee  became  the  only  body 
capable  of  acting  with  consent  of  the  people  without  directly 
exposing  all  its  members  to  the  penalty  of  high  treason.  It 
openly  took  upon  itself  the  government  of  the  State,  the  sup 
plying  of  Boston  with  provisions,  local  administration,  and 
the  organization  of  revolt. 

Nothing  remained  but  to  convince  the  men  around  Boston 
that  the  only  course  left  them  was  open  resistance.  Parlia 
ment  furnished  it  in  the  Act  for  the  exclusion  of  the  colonies 
from  the  Newfoundland  Fisheries.  Salt  cod  was  the  chief 
staple  of  New  England 's  trade  with  the  rest  of  the  world,  and, 
if  they  were  excluded  from  the  principal  source  of  supply,  the 
New  England  colonies  would  be  ruined  whether  the  foreign 
sugar  islands  were  open  or  closed  to  colonial  trade.  The  news 
of  this  Act  arrived  on  April  2,  1775,  and  Adams  and  his  fol 
lowers  at  once  saw  that  the  decisive  factor  had  appeared  and 
was  in  their  favor.  From  that  moment,  they  determined  to 
force  the  issue,  confident  that  Massachusetts  would  support 
them.  In  full  consciousness  of  the  strength  and  excellence  of 
the  new  organization,  rather  than  in  any  spirit  of  prophesy, 
Joseph  Warren  wrote  on  April  3,  1775,  "America  must  and 
will  be  free.  The  contest  may  be  severe;  the  end  will  be 
glorious.  We  would  not  boast,  but  we  think,  united  and  pre 
pared  as  we  are,  we  have  no  reason  to  doubt  of  success. ' ' 

General  Gage  soon  provided  an  admirable  opportunity  for 
a  demonstration.  Despite  the  activity  of  Adams  and  his  Com- 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RESISTANCE  103 

mittees,  there  were  few  places  in  New  England  and  few  in 
the  other  colonies  where  their  adherents  were  really  in  the 
majority  and  determined  to  fight.  There  were  still  fewer 
places  where  any  preparations  for  armed  resistance  had  been 
actually  made.  But  along  the  highroad  from  Boston  to  Con 
cord,  the  shire  town  of  Middlesex  County,  and  the  market 
town  for  the  whole  district  around  Boston,  were  a  series  of 
towns  where  Adams's  propaganda  had  met  the  most  en 
thusiastic  response  of  any  place  in  America.  An  overwhelm 
ing  majority  of  the  men  were  determined  to  fight,  had  been 
organized  into  companies  and  provided  with  arms,  a  consider 
able  store  of  which,  with  powder  and  lead,  had  been  collected 
at  Concord.  In  the  previous  February  the  British  had  seized 
cannon  at  Salem ;  in  March  had  captured  cartridges  and  can 
non-balls  that  were  being  smuggled  into  Boston  in  candle-boxes 
and  hay-wagons;  and  though  fights  with  the  populace  were 
averted  by  the  narrowest  of  margins,  the  fact  was  beyond  dis 
pute  that  no  outbreak  had  taken  place.  But  when  General 
Gage  determined  to  send  his  troops  to  Concord  on  the  night 
of  April  18,  to  seize  the  stores  collected  there,  he  thrust  his 
men  into  the  one  place  in  all  America  where  adequate  prepara 
tions  for  their  reception  had  been  made. 

The  alarm  was  spread  by  the  people  themselves  and  reached 
Lexington  and  Concord  far  ahead  of  the  messengers,  of  whom 
only  John  Dawes  reached  Concord.  At  two  in  the  morning, 
more  than  a  hundred  minute-men  were  waiting  on  Lexington 
Common,  but  no  one  came,  the  night  was  cold,  and  they  dis 
persed.  At  three  the  alarm  was  in  Concord.  Five  o'clock 
found  about  a  hundred  minute-men,  armed  with  muskets, 
assembled  again  on  Lexington  Common  and  they  soon  saw 
the  red-coated  column  approaching.  Both  they  and  the  Eng 
lish  seem  to  have  been  somewhat  non-plussed,  and  some  mo 
ments  passed  in  indecision;  but  a  company  of  the  red-coats 
was  detached  from  the  column,  which,  without  waiting,  started 
for  Concord.  The  company  deployed  on  the  green  and  fired  a 
volley  at  the  minute-men,  who  returned  a  few  scattered  shots 
and  then  dispersed,  carrying  their  wounded.  The  company 


104  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

fell  back  into  the  column  and  the  British  marched  on  to  Con 
cord,  where  they  met  an  unexpectedly  stout  resistance.  The 
minute-men  actually  drove  back  into  town  a  small  detach 
ment  who  were  guarding  a  bridge,  and  followed  them  with  a 
persistence  that  astonished  the  British.  After  some  powder 
and  shot  had  been  destroyed,  the  British  officers,  who  had 
been  strictly  ordered  not  to  rouse  the  country,  determined  to 
return  to  Boston.  A  large  body  of  Americans  returned  with 
them,  annoying  them  with  a  deadly  flanking  fire  from  the 
little  hillsides  fringing  the  Boston  road,  but  not  offering 
enough  resistance  to  draw  upon  them  an  attack  in  force. 
The  British  column,  we  now  know,  voluntarily  returned  in 
obedience  to  orders;  the  minute-men  could  not  have  driven 
them  from  the  field  had  they  chosen  to  stand  their  ground; 
but  the  minute-men  and  the  countryside  deemed  it  a  retreat 
before  superior  force.  The  effect  was  incalculable;  recruits 
poured  into  the  camp  in  the  Cambridge  marshes;  the  other 
New  England  States  promptly  started  their  militia  for  Boston. 
Most  of  the  accounts  which  spread  through  the  colonies  were 
false,  but  glorious ; — the  British  army  had  been  driven  into 
Boston  and  was  there  besieged!  The  news  "will  plead  with 
all  America,"  wrote  Mrs.  John  Adams  in  May,  "with  more 
irresistible  persuasion  than  angels  trumpet- tongued. " 

The  more  completely  to  invest  Boston,  the  project  was 
adopted  by  the  patriots  of  erecting  a  redoubt  upon  the  high 
est  part  of  Charlestown  Hill,  the  whole  of  which  was  then 
known  as  Bunker's  Hill.  On  the  sixteenth  of  June,  a  body  of 
several  hundred  men  under  Colonel  Prescott  marched  across 
Charlestown  Neck  and  began  a  redoubt  on  the  lower  of  the 
two  hills,  and  that  nearer  the  water,  since  called  Breed's  Hill. 
From  a  military  point  of  view,  the  error  was  great :  the  Eng 
lish  fleet,  anchored  off  the  Neck,  could  have  cut  off  their  re 
treat  and  compelled  their  surrender  to  the  regiments,  who 
could  easily  have  been  landed  in  the  rear  of  the  entrenchment, 
which  was  wholly  commanded  by  the  hill  on  which  the  monu 
ment  now  stands.  All  this  was  seen  by  Gage  and  Howe,  but 
was  cast  aside  in  favor  of  a  demonstration.  They  would  land 


THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  RESISTANCE  105 

in  front  of  the  redoubt  and  rail  fence  stuffed  with  hay,  and 
show  the  farmers  and  the  colonies  in  general  that  resistance 
was  hopeless  even  when  the  British  voluntarily  gave  the  farm 
ers  every  possible  advantage.  Up  the  slope,  with  flags  fly 
ing,  went  the  British  line;  down  again  in  haste  it  came. 
Twice  the  assault  failed,  and  then  was  successful  largely  be 
cause  the  farmers,  finding  their  ammunition  low,  began  to 
retreat.  They  were  allowed  to  escape  unmolested  by  the  as 
tonished  regulars.  The  country  was  electrified.  The  most 
diverse  reports  went  broadcast  about  the  numbers  engaged, 
the  casualties,  and  the  narrative  of  the  action.  Many  blamed 
the  patriots  for  fighting  at  all.  John  Adams  accurately 
summed  up  contemporary  opinion:  "Considering  all  the  dis 
advantages  under  which  they  fought  they  really  exhibited 
prodigies  of  valour. ' '  But  Bunker  Hill,  from  a  military  point 
of  view  a  crushing  defeat  for  the  Americans,  was  a  moral  vic 
tory  of  the  first  importance.  A  miracle  had  happened: — the 
farmers  had  stood  their  ground,  unabashed  by  the  line  of  red 
coats.  Bunker  Hill  "instantly  convinced  us,"  wrote  Ezra 
Stiles,  President  of  Yale  College,  "and  for  the  first  time  con 
vinced  Britons  themselves  that  Americans  both  would  and 
could  fight  with  great  effect." 


IX 
FIRST  ATTEMPTS  AT  PERMANENT  ORGANIZATION 

THE  hostilities  at  Lexington  and  at  Bunker  Hill  had  been  the 
work  of  the  Committees  of  Correspondence  and  their  adher 
ents,  and  not  that  of  a  regularly  constituted  State  or  local 
government,  and,  even  if  the  people  of  Massachusetts  did 
finally  accept  responsibility  for  what  had  been  done,  nothing 
was  clearer  to  the  leaders  in  the  other  colonies  than  that  they 
themselves  had  not  been  and  would  not  be  in  any  way  obli 
gated  even  by  such  action.  Their  relations  to  Massachusetts, 
to  each  other,  and  to  England  were  still  to  be  decided  by  such 
notions  of  law  and  expediency  as  careful  consideration 
should  show  to  be  important.  At  the  same  time,  the  strong 
sentiment  in  favor  of  supporting  the  gallant  stand  of  the 
Massachusetts  men  caused  the  leaders  throughout  America 
promptly  to  begin  the  thorough  discussion  of  ways,  means, 
and  methods. 

They  soon  found  themselves  seriously  at  odds  over  the 
most  expedient  method  of  securing  English  recognition  of 
American  claims.  One  party  declared  war  inexpedient  and 
a  settlement  agreeable  to  America  easily  obtainable  by  negoti 
ation  and  passive  resistance,  while  their  opponents  insisted 
upon  armed  resistance  as  the  only  means  of  convincing  Eng 
land  of  the  generality  and  seriousness  of  American  opposi 
tion.  The  former  and  larger  party  stood  upon  familiar 
colonial  ground  and  espoused  methods  which  had  long  been 
successful,  and  to  it  naturally  flocked  the  conservatives  and 
the  timid,  afraid  of  compromising  themselves  and  of  thus 
endangering  their  lives  or  property.  Their  opponents  insisted 
that  some  sort  of  legalization  of  what  had  been  done  by  the 
institution  of  a  definite  revolutionary  organization  was  im- 

106 


FIRST  ATTEMPTS  AT  PERMANENT  ORGANIZATION       107 

perative,  not  only  to  make  resistance  effective,  but  to  give  the 
movement  a  legal  status  which  would  enable  its  supporters  to 
claim  the  rights  of  belligerents  and  permit  them  to  recruit 
their  ranks  from  those  whom  the  fears  of  confiscation  and  exe 
cution  would  otherwise  hold  passive.  The  anxiety  of  the  very 
men  who  had  fought  at  Lexington  to  free  themselves  of  lia 
bility  by  denying  that  they  had  " resisted"  at  all  warned 
Adams  and  his  friends  of  what  was  otherwise  to  be  expected 
even  from  the  boldest.  Indeed,  without  assuming  a  definite 
object  of  some  kind  for  which  to  fight,  without  in  some  way 
defining  their  future  legal  relations  to  England  and  to  each 
other,  it  was  clear  that  no  general  cooperation  of  colonies  or 
individuals  was  to  be  expected.  It  was  highly  probable  that, 
unless  some  public  pledges  sufficiently  definite  to  make  diffi 
cult  the  desertion  of  the  common  cause  were  soon  obtained, 
some  States,  if  not  the  majority,  would  make  their  peace  with 
England  individually  and  leave  the  few  to  bear  the  brunt  of 
the  mother-country's  displeasure.1  The  greatest  obstacle  in 
the  way  of  resistance  soon  proved  to  be  the  exceedingly  di 
vergent  notions  about  the  future  relations  of  the  various 
States  in  America  to  each  other,  the  sort  of  cooperation 
needed,  the  kind  of  central  administration  required. 

The  obvious  inadequacy  of  the  existing  arrangements,  ad 
ministrative  and  military,  caused  at  once  the  greatest  per 
plexity  and  concern.  The  committees  of  correspondence, 
which  were  now  pretty  generally  spread  throughout  the 
country,  were  at  most  empowered  only  to  investigate,  corre 
spond,  and  suggest,  and  could  not  claim  to  have  been  author 
ized  by  local  or  State  governments  to  commence  a  revolution. 
In  several  colonies,  they  had  been  unable  to  secure  any  open 
recognition  at  all  and  were  voluntary  associations  of  men,  en 
tirely  extra-legal,  whose  organization  would  certainly  not  con 
fer  upon  them  or  their  abettors  the  belligerent  status  so  ob 
viously  desirable.  In  Massachusetts,  to  be  sure,  the  rescind 
ing  of  the  colonial  charter  had  furnished  the  Boston  Com- 

1  The  Journals  of  the  Continental  Congress  and  Force's  American 
Archives  are  full  of  material  on  this  point. 


108  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

mittee  of  Correspondence  an  opportunity  to  oppose  the  British 
officials  with  the  open  approval  of  the  populace,  and  this 
Adams  had  interpreted  as  a  legalization  of  the  Committee's 
work.  The  English  government  would  certainly  not  agree 
with  him  on  that  point,  and  it  was  by  no  means  sure  that  the 
people  of  Boston  would  if  their  movement  failed  of  instant 
success  and  prompt  support  elsewhere.  Outside  Massachu 
setts,  the  authorities  of  the  several  States  had  clung  to  their 
charters  and  had  held  carefully  aloof  from  the  committees  and 
their  propaganda.2  Nor  did  the  people  of  the  colonies  in 
general  manifest  clearly  any  desire  for  independence  of  Eng 
land.  "Until  after  the  rejection  of  the  second  petition  of 
Congress  in  1775,"  wrote  John  Jay,  "I  never  heard  an  Ameri 
can  of  any  class  or  any  description  express  a  wish  for  the 
independence  of  the  colonies."  Not  only  was  there  in  June 
1775,  no  definite  State  or  national'organization  pledged  to  op 
position  to  England,  which  could  not  easily  have  been  dis 
owned,  but  there  was  apparent  no  sentiment  in  favor  of  the 
creation  of  such  a  body  or  bodies. 

The  Continental  Congress  could  not  claim  any  such  posi 
tion.  It  represented  the  radical  elements  in  the  various  States 
rather  than  the  organized  governments.  Indeed,  many  of  the 
delegates,  both  in  1774  and  1775,  had  been  appointed  by  the 
committees  of  correspondence  without  even  a  pretense  of  elec 
tion  by  the  people.  Some  States  were  not  represented  at  all, 
and  others  were  only  partially  represented.  The  Congress 
was  in  truth  a  body  of  ambassadors  from  confessedly  extra- 
legal  associations  and  possessed  no  status  which  the  States  in 
America  or  the  Crown  in  England  would  in  any  wray  be  com 
pelled  to  recognize.  Further,  it  was  by  no  means  certain  that 
the  majority  of  Americans  favored  a  central  organization  of 
any  kind.3 

2  This  whole  subject  has  been  treated  by  Agnes  Hunt,  Provincial  Com 
mittees  of  Safety.     Much  evidence  is  in  Force's  American  Archives. 

3  The  student  should  in  particular  read  the  anxious  debates  in  Con 
gress  in  the  fall  of  1775  and  spring  of  1776  upon  the  formation  of  a 
new  government  and  note  the  direct  testimony  of  the  reluctance  of  the 
people  to  act.     Most  of  the  authorizations  to  members  of  Congress  in 


FIRST  ATTEMPTS  AT  PERMANENT  ORGANIZATION       109 

What  Lexington  and  Bunker  Hill  had  not  been  able  to  ac 
complish  was  consummated  by  the  rejection  of  the  Olive 
Branch  Petition  by  George  III  in  the  summer  of  1775,  and 
after  the  arrival  of  the  news  there  was  in  the  fall  of  1775  a 
very  general  acquiescence  in  or  tacit  acceptance  of  the  revolu 
tionary  organization  already  in  existence,  though  the  leaders 
were  keenly  alive  to  the  fact  that  this  sort  of  recognition 
pledged  neither  States  nor  individuals  to  the  continuance  of 
the  war.  New  executive  officers  were  chosen  in  Massachusetts 
in  defiance  of  the  English  statute  of  1774;  but  in  most  States 
the  actual  business  of  the  country  was  still  transacted  through 
the  colonial  governmental  structure.  If  the  voice  had  become 
the  voice  of  Jacob,  the  hands  were  still  those  of  Esau.  The 
nearly  universal  acceptance  of  the  members  of  Congress  in 
Philadelphia  by  the  people  or  the  popular  choice  of  new  mem 
bers  soon  gave  that  body  a  quasi-legal  status  as  a  congress  of 
ambassadors  and  enabled  it  to  act  with  something  approach 
ing  legality  or  regularity  as  a  central  organ  of  some  inde 
scribably  vague  variety.  The  appointment  of  Washington  as 
Commander-in-Chief  of  the  army  at  Boston  in  July  1775,  and 
the  presence  of  various  officers  and  regiments  from  several 
States  in  that  army  was  more  definite  evidence  of  coopera 
tion  between  the  States  for  resistance,  and  enabled  Congress 
to  claim  in  the  fall  of  1775  support  in  nearly  all  sections  of 
the  country.  But  no  definite  general  action  had  been  taken; 
no  formal  sanction  of  resistance  had  been  given  by  States  or 
people.  Their  approval  referred  rather  to  past  than  to  future 
action.  The  people  in  the  States  expected  to  take  further 
action  when  they  thought  it  necessary ;  the  States  intended  to 
reserve  their  approval  of  further  resistance  and  the  legaliza 
tion  of  cooperation  until  they  should  make  up  their  several 
minds;  they  reserved  complete  right  to  recall  their  citizens 
from  the  army  or  from  Congress  whenever  they  should  deem  it 
necessary. 

This  uncertainty  crippled  no  branch  of  the  revolutionary 

favor   of   independence   carefully  omitted   instructions   on  the   question 
of  further  organization. 


110  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

fabric  as  much  as  it  did  the  Congress.  In  the  nature  of 
things,  the  latter  possessed  no  definite  grant  of  authority. 
Above  all,  it  must  not  alienate  any  section  of  its  supporters, 
for  nothing  would  so  quickly  ruin  the  movement  as  the  open 
defection  of  some  strong  State.  Congress  must,  therefore, 
find  the  definition  of  its  powers  in  the  instructions  of  its  mem 
bers  rather  than  in  the  needs  of  the  moment.  It  must 
somehow  steer  the  middle  course  between  the  radicals,  who 
threatened  to  leave  the  movement  if  more  was  not  promptly 
done,  and  the  conservatives  who  threatened  to  desert  if  one 
step  more  was  taken.  The  Congress  must  follow  rather  than 
lead;  it  must  do  what  seemed  likely  to  be  approved  rather 
than  what  was  expedient  or  necessary.4  The  administrative 
difficulties  of  the  Revolution  must  be  more  thoroughly  under 
stood  if  we  are  to  realize  how  splendid  an  achievement  our 
independence  is. 

The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  permanent  cooperation  seemed 
to  contemporaries  almost  insurmountable,  and  attracted  more 
attention  abroad  than  any  single  aspect  of  the  situation.  The 
distances  sundering  the  States  had  effectually  prevented  rapid 
or  frequent  communication  and  had  produced  almost  as  great 

*  Every  page  of  the  Journals  of  Congress  proves  only  too  clearly  the 
truth  of  this  statement.  See,  for  instance,  the  attempt  to  deal  with 
the  pressing  problem  of  deserters  in  Feb.  1777,  and  the  obvious  inade 
quacy  of  the  resolve  passed  to  solve  the  difficulty  as  they  saw  it.  "An 
obstinate  partiality  to  the  habits  and  customs  of  one  part  of  this  con 
tinent  has  predominated  in  the  public  councils  and  too  little  attention 
has  been  paid  to  others.  ...  It  has  been  my  fate  to  make  an  inef 
fectual  opposition  [in  Congress]  to  all  short  enlistments,  to  colonial 
[i.  e.,  Statel  appointment  of  officers  and  to  many  other  measures,  which 
I  thought  pregnant  with  mischief;  but  these  things  either  suited  with 
the  genius  and  habits  or  squared  with  the  interests  of  Some  States, 
that  had  sufficient  influence  to  prevail  [in  Congress]  and  nothing  is 
now  left  but  to  extricate  ourselves  as  we'll  as  we  can."  Robert  Morris 
to  Washington,  Dec.  23,  1776.  MS.  letter,  quoted  in  Sparks's  Washing 
ton's  Writings,  IV,  237,  note. 

"It  is  a  fact  too  notorious  to  be  concealed  that  Cfongress]  is  rent 
by  party — that  much  business  of  a  trifling  nature  and  personal  concern 
ment  withdraw  their  attention  from  matters  of  great  national  moment 
at  this  critical  period/*  Washington  to  Mason,  March  27,  1779.  Wash 
ington's  Writings,  Ford's  ed.,  VII,  383. 


FIRST  ATTEMPTS  AT  PERMANENT  ORGANIZATION       111 

a  lack  of  acquaintance  between  parts  of  America  as  between 
America  and  England.  Indeed,  many  more  Americans  had 
been  in  London  than  had  traveled  in  the  colonies,  and  the 
constant  receipt  of  letters,  papers,  and  books  from  the  mother- 
country  had  kept  each  colony  more  keenly  aware  of  what  went 
on  in  England  than  it  was  of  what  happened  in  its  own  vi 
cinity.  In  fact,  the  States  were  contiguous  only  on  paper  and 
were  really  separated  by  great  stretches  of  wilderness,  sowed 
with  rivers  and  bogs  and  almost  devoid  of  roads.  Actually, 
they  were  independent  of  each  other  as  well  as  of  England, 
and  there  was  not  as  yet  sufficient  pressure  of  circumstances 
to  make  cooperation  seem  imperative  rather  than  merely  desir 
able.  The  possibilities  of  agreement,  moreover,  seemed  slight. 
To  most  Americans,  the  superficial  differences  of  customs  and 
religion  were  more  striking  than  were  the  great  fundamental 
similarities  which  attracted  the  attention  of  the  leaders  and 
gave  them  confidence  in  the  ultimate  outcome.  New  England 
was  Congregationalist,  Virginia  Episcopalian,  Pennsylvania 
Quaker;  and  the  religious  disputes,  in  particular  those  grow 
ing  out  of  the  threatened  severance  of  relations  with  the 
Church  of  England  in  case  the  States  should  attempt  actual 
independence  of  the  mother-country,  were  serious  obstacles 
for  a  time  in  the  way  of  a  permanent  organization.  The 
old  traditional  disputes  had  been  revived:  Pennsylvania  and 
Maryland,  Maryland  and  Virginia,  New  Jersey  and  New 
York,  Rhode  Island  and  Massachusetts,  South  Carolina  and 
Georgia  had  long  cherished  grievances  against  each  other  and 
now  lost  no  opportunity  to  pursue  the  quarrel.  Then,  a  cen 
tury  of  development  had  allowed  certain  colonies  to  outstrip 
the  others  in  size  and  wealth;  had  created  the  jealousies  be 
tween  the  large  and  small  States  which  were  in  1787  so  sig 
nificant.  All  these  differences  had  long  prevented  the  adop 
tion  of  any  scheme  of  central  government  in  colonial  America 
and  they  seemed  still  to  present  almost  insuperable  obstacles 
to  permanent  cooperation. 

They  were,   however,  less  serious  than   the   social   differ 
ences.    The  fact  that  the  Atlantic  coast  was  everywhere  ac- 


112  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

cessible  from  the  sea  and  was  well-furnished  with  deep  par 
allel  rivers  had  early  produced  a  pretty  general  settlement 
of  the  coast  regions  and  the  lower  reaches  of  the  rivers  all 
along  the  seaboard.  Subsequent  development  had  pushed 
this  long  thin  line  of  settlement  westward,  until  there  ex 
isted  in  1776  a  fringe  of  thoroughly  established  towns  and 
counties  along  the  coast  and  a  wider  belt  inland  where  con 
ditions  were  still  those  of  the  frontier.  Between  the  two 
districts  there  had  always  been  a  certain  antagonism,  based 
on  the  inevitable  dependence  of  the  interior  upon  the  coast 
for  the  sale  of  its  own  produce  and  for  its  supplies  of  salt 
and  manufactured  goods.  The  frontier,  being  therefore 
nearly  always  in  debt  to  the  coast,  resented  keenly  the  lat 
ter 's  economic  position  and  assumption  of  social  superiority. 
Thus  developed  the  distinction  between  the  settled  communi 
ties  and  the  frontier,  between  the  East  and  the  West,  be 
tween  the  creditor  and  debtor  communities,  which  is  one  of 
the  most  fundamental  lines  in  American  life  and  one  of  the 
oldest. 

At  this  time,  however,  it  was  less  a  dividing  line  between 
States  than  a  cleft  in  every  State,  tending  to  create  social 
distinctions  and  foment  internal  discord.  It  tended  to  coin 
cide  in  each  State  with  the  line  of  rich  and  poor,  creditor 
and  debtor,  and  made  it  difficult  to  institute  strong  govern 
ment  in  the  States  themselves;  and  particularly  stood  in  the 
way  of  the  adhesion  of  the  States  as  a  whole  to  any  scheme 
of  strong  central  government,  because  of  the  determination 
of  the  debtors  to  oppose  the  development  of  governmental 
machinery  likely  to  facilitate  the  collection  of  debts.  The 
Revolution  was  not  only  a  war  between  England  and  Amer 
ica,  not  only  a  struggle  of  political  parties  in  both  countries, 
but  a  civil  war  in  America,  some  of  whose  aspects  were  those 
of  a  social  war  of  classes.  To  this  many  of  the  most  char 
acteristic  manifestations  of  the  Revolution  were  partially  due 
— the  early  mob  violence,  the  opposition  to  English  adminis 
tration,  the  treatment  of  the  Loyalists.  To  it  are  due  most 
of  the  aspects  of  the  critical  years  just  previous  to  the  adop- 


FIRST  ATTEMPTS  AT  PERMANENT  ORGANIZATION       113 

tion  of  the  Constitution.  Like  every  great  event  in  his 
tory,  the  Revolution  was  a  struggle  of  many  motives  and  many 
interests,  and  was  concerned  not  only  with  the  authority  of 
England  over  America,  but  with  the  relations  of  Americans 
to  each  other  in  the  several  States  and  in  the  central  govern 
ment. 

At  just  this  juncture,  when  in  the  winter  of  1775-76  every 
thing  hung  in  the  balance,  when  energetic  united  action 
seemed  improbable,  and  defeat  for  Massachusetts  unless 
promptly  supported  seemed  certain,  the  union  between  the 
revolutionary  movement  and  the  war  between  debtor  and 
creditor  gave  a  mighty  impulse  to  open  resistance  by  secur 
ing  the  adhesion  of  large  numbers  of  men  who  had  hitherto 
held  aloof.  Naturally  enough,  among  the  more  adventurous 
and  radical  spirits,  who  had  at  first  flocked  to  the  commit 
tees,  had  been  men  who  had  not  so  much  to  lose  that  fears 
of  confiscation  weighed  heavily  upon  them.  A  farmer  could 
easily  enough  retrieve  the  loss  of  his  acres  by  moving  on 
and  taking  up  a  new  claim.  The  men  who  had  held  back  had 
been  not  only  the  conservatives,  but  the  merchants  and  the 
creditor  class,  in  general  men  who  were  likely  to  lose  heavily 
by  the  interference  of  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  with  the 
regularity  of  trade.  Such  an  alignment  of  debtor  and  cred 
itor  was  natural  enough  and  has  always  appeared  at  the  be 
ginning  of  great  wars.  It  was  probably  as  little  in  evidence 
during  the  Revolution  as  in  any  period  of  change  in  his 
tory,  but  it  certainly  played  a  significant  part.  Indeed,  so 
largely  did  the  debtor  class  preponderate  in  the  early  move 
ments  that,  until  the  adhesion  of  Hancock,  Washington, 
Franklin,  John  Adams,  and  other  men  of  wealth  and  sta 
tion  became  known,  it  was  widely  claimed  in  England  and 
America  that  resistance  was  merely  the  work  of  a  crowd 
of  disorderly  men  who  refused  to  pay  their  debts  or  who  had 
nothing  to  lose.5 

6  The  evidence  is  too  voluminous  to  be  cited  in  so  brief  a  book  and 
will  be  found  literally  in  all  directions.  An  example  or  two  must  suf 
fice.  Johnston,  one  of  the  North  Carolina  radicals,  wrote  to  a  friend 


114  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Then,  when  the  tacit  recognition  of  the  Revolution  by  the 
people  permitted  the  extension  of  organization,  the  ablest 
and  most  prominent  men  were  at  once  drawn  into  the  serv 
ice  of  the  States,  of  the  central  administration,  or  of  the 
army,  and  local  government  fell  into  the  hands  of  the 
most  radical  and  least  experienced  men  connected  with  the 
movement.  Nor  were  their  acts  likely  to  be  questioned  or 
their  discretion  hampered  from  above,  as  they  well  knew. 
The  men  at  the  helm  in  the  State  had  staked  their  all  upon 
success  and  were  not  receiving  such  universal  support  as  to 
make  them  willing  to  quarrel  with  the  local  leaders  for  being 
too  outspoken  or  too  energetic  in  maintaining  the  cause. 
Graver  business,  too,  prevented  really  adequate  supervision  of 
the  local  committees,  whom  the  exigencies  of  the  situation 
thus  invested  with  literally  absolute,  unrestricted  authority. 

The  men  into  whose  hands  this  vast  power  fell  were  for 
the  most  part  debtors  and  they  promptly  began  to  use  it 
against  all  who  had  for  a  variety  of  reasons  not  yet  openly 
joined  the  Cause.  John  Adams  and  others  have  recorded 
opinions  that  not  more  than  a  third  of  the  people  openly 
espoused  the  movement,  but  the  great  majority  of  those  who 
held  aloof  were  by  no  means  British  sympathizers.  "Some 
are  [hostile]  from  real  attachment  to  Britain,"  said  a  letter 
written  by  a  secret  committee  of  Congress;  "some  from  inter 
ested  views,  many,  very  many,  from  fear  of  the  British  forces, 
some  because  they  are  dissatisfied  with  the  general  measures 

in  December  1776,  that  the  members  of  the  Constitutional  Convention 
of  North  Carolina  who  had  the  least  pretensions  to  be  gentlemen  were 
regarded  with  suspicion  by  the  others  (who  were  in  the  majority)  and 
who  were  "a  set  of  men  without  reading,  experience,  or  principle  to 
govern  them."  The  members  of  the  first  legislature  he  characterized  as 
"fools  and  knaves,  who  by  their  low  Arts  have  worked  themselves  into 
the  good  graces  of  the  populace."  North  Carolina  Records,  X,  1041; 
XI,  504,  627 ;  and  elsewhere.  The  crew  of  an  American  war  vessel  were 
thus  described:  "His  people  really  appear  to  me  to  be  a  set  of  the 
most  unprincipled  abandoned  fellows  I  ever  saw."  American  Archives, 
Fourth  Series,  III,  1378,  1658.  (1775.) 

If  such  was  the  testimony  of  patriots,  one  can  readily  imagine  the 
opinions  of  loyalists  and  Englishmen. 


FIRST  ATTEMPTS  AT  PERMANENT  ORGANIZATION       115 

of  Congress,  more  because  they  disapprove  of  the  men  in 
power  and  the  measures  in  their  respective  States."  The 
"Patriots,"  however,  dubbed  all  these  men  "Loyalists"  and 
began  to  deal  with  them  all  as  professed  enemies  of  the  Cause. 
Avowed  supporters  of  England  and  English  officials  were 
promptly  driven  out  of  the  district,  their  property  confis 
cated,  and  such  as  were  captured  were  subjected  to  indigni 
ties  and  such  physical  abuse  as  tar  and  feathering.  The 
timid  soon  discovered,  therefore,  that  the  consequences  of  not 
abetting  the  Revolution  were  more  tangible  and  quite  as 
terrifying  as  those  of  opposing  England,  and  the  committees 
of  correspondence  thus  convinced  very  large  numbers  of  peo 
ple  that  George  III  was  a  tyrant. 

But  the  exercise  of  authority  grew  by  what  it  fed  on  and 
demanded  new  victims.  The  ease  of  employing  this  new 
weapon  to  pay  off  old  scores  and  to  further  selfish  interests 
was  too  great  for  many  to  resist  the  temptation.  Thus  self- 
interest  and  the  spice  of  hatred  and  traditional  antipathy 
between  the  debtors  and  creditors  gave  the  Revolution  a 
mighty  impulse  and  the  deeds  done  in  the  name  of  Liberty 
committed  many  thousands  to  its  cause  by  methods  which 
only  eventual  success  could  condone.6  A  good  many  men 

« The  minister  of  Longmeadow,  Massachusetts,  a  patriot,  gives  the 
following  account  in  his  Diary  of  1776:  "April  9. — I  hear  of  tumults 
and  disorderly  practices;  stupidity,  hardness  of  heart,  atheism,  and 
unbelief  prevail.  The  British  ministry  breathe  out  cruelty  against  the 
colonies  still.  .  .  .  July  24. — A  number  of  people  gathered  together, 
some  dressed  like  Indians  with  blankets,  and  manifested  uneasiness 
with  those  that  trade  in  rum,  molasses,  sugar,  etc.  I  understand  that 
a  number  went  to  Merchant  Colton's  and  have  again  [note  this  signifi 
cant  word]  taken  away  his  goods.  I  don't  see  the  justice  or  equity 
of  it.  Many  don't  approve  of  it,  but  have  not  resolution  enough  to 
interpose  and  endeavor  redress.  .  .  .  Nov.  30 — Military  Co.  called  to 
gether  at  a  minute's  warning  to  go  wherever  called.  People  don't 
appear  forward.  .  .  .  Our  soldiers  begin  to  return  that  enlisted  for  a 
stated  time,  and  people  seem  engaged  to  get  money,  and  I  fear  by  op 
pression  and  unjust  measures."  Hart,  American  History  Told  by  Con 
temporaries,  II,  45G,  457. 

A  bibliography  of  the  loyalists  and  their  sufferings  is  in  C.  H.  Van 
Tyne,  American  Revolution,  338-340.  Particularly  interesting  is  Samuel 
Curwen's  Journal  and  Letters. 


116  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

of  wealth  were  promptly  declared  loyalists  and  their  prop 
erty  seized  and  distributed,  although  they  protested  that  they 
were  not  English  supporters  at  all.  Imitations  of  the  Tea 
Party  gave  excuse  for  the  robbing  of  stores  and  warehouses; 
local  regulations  and  even  state  laws  required  the  payment 
of  coin  by  loyalists  to  patriots  and  the  acceptance  of  de 
preciated  paper  currency  at  its  face  value  from  patriots  in 
exchange  for  goods.  The  property  of  all  the  exiles,  volun 
tary  and  involuntary,  was  at  once  distributed.  In  time,  this 
war  of  the  debtor  upon  the  creditor  class  culminated  in  that 
union  of  the  propertied  class  throughout  the  country  in 
favor  of  strong  government  which  was  largely  responsible 
for  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution.  In  the  meantime,  this 
onslaught  upon  the  creditors  pretty  generally  brought  about 
their  adhesion  to  the  Revolution  or  their  organization  against 
it.  After  1776,  the  loyalists  were  in  the  minority  in  New 
England;  in  the  South,  they  were  in  the  minority  along  the 
coast  and  in  the  majority  in  the  interior;  while  in  the  Mid 
dle  States  they  equaled  if  they  did  not  outnumber  the  pa 
triots.  Thus,  throughout  the  country,  the  existence  of  a 
stanch  opposition  to  the  Revolution,  in  many  districts  thor 
oughly  successful,  became  evident. 

It  has  been  difficult  for  posterity  to  realize  that  a  con 
siderable  portion  of  the  people  did  not  support  the  Revolu 
tion;  it  has  been  even  more  difficult  for  us  to  realize  that 
their  opposition  to  the  movement  was  based  upon  differences 
of  opinion  for  the  most  part  American  in  their  origin  and 
effect,  which  did  not  in  the  least  indicate  a  desire  for  Eng 
lish  rule  or  a  dislike  of  American  independence.  The  op 
position  was  the  normal  result  of  the  civil  war  in  America. 

The  issue  raised  by  the  war,  as  contemporaries  saw  it, 
was  not  as  much  the  desirability  or  possibility  of  independ 
ence  of  England — upon  this  the  agreement  was  so  general 
as  hardly  to  admit  of  debate  or  require  argument — but  of 
the  desirability  and  expediency  of  obtaining  that  independ 
ence  by  means  of  a  central  administration  whose  very  ex 
istence  would  necessarily  deprive  the  States  of  some  of  their 


FIRST  ATTEMPTS  AT  PERMANENT  ORGANIZATION       117 

cherished  sovereignty.  Not  loyalty  to  England,  but  States' 
sovereignty  was  the  formidable  obstacle  in  the  way  of  the 
Revolution  preventing  permanent  cooperation.  Many  and 
many  a  man  seriously  feared  the  results  of  a  victory  over  the 
British  won  by  Washington  at  the  head  of  an  army,  which 
might  then  be  strong  enough  to  erect  a  central  government 
more  powerful,  and  therefore  more  obnoxious,  than  the  British 
government  had  ever  been.  States'  sovereignty  and  State 
independence  were  the  supremely  desirable  things  and  the 
great  majority  had  no  more  intention  of  sacrificing  them  to 
erect  a  revolutionary  organization  in  America  than  they  had 
of  submitting  to  the  rule  of  George  III. 

Independence  meant,  as  Paine  phrased  it,  "a  continental 
form  of  government  (which)  can  keep  the  peace  of  the 
continent  and  preserve  it  inviolate  from  civil  war."  Sig 
nificant  words,  these ;  significant,  too,  his  omission  of  all 
mention  of  England.  John  Adams,  writing  to  his  wife  in 
April  1776,  defined  independence  as  ''government  in  every 
colony,  a  confederation  among  them  all,  and  treaties  with 
foreign  nations  to  acknowledge  us  as  a  sovereign  State,  and 
all  that."  Of  a  nation  in  our  sense  of  the  word,  composed 
of  individuals  and  governed  by  a  central  administration, 
superior  in  obligation  to  the  State  governments  so  far  as 
the  individual  was  concerned,  there  seems  to  have  been  little 
talk.  The  idea,  if  it  occurred  to  many,  seems  not  to  have 
been  seriously  discussed.  The  "continental  form  of  govern 
ment"  meant  one  which  provided  explicitly  for  the  sovereignty 
of  thirteen  separate  States.  Some  of  the  States  declared 
themselves  independent  of  England  in  the  spring  of  1776 ;  the 
rest  afterwards  followed  suit,  while  there  seems  to  be  good 
reason  to  believe  that  the  County  of  Mecklenburg,  N.  C., 
declared  itself  independent  as  early  as  May  1775.7 

The  expediency  of  any  central  government,  the  exact  form 
of  the  new  government,  its  probable  powers,  its  relation  to 
the  States,  the  necessity  or  desirability  of  forming  new  State 

7  Hoyt,  Mecklenburg  Declaration.  The  Resolves  of  May  31  are  un 
doubtedly  genuine;  the  document  of  May  20  is  now  generally  rejected. 


118  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

governments,  all  these  were  really  the  issues  behind  the 
question  of  independence,  which  was  so  widely  and  actively 
discussed  throughout  America  from  the  summer  of  1775  to 
the  summer  of  1776.  Public  meetings  thrashed  it  over ;  dele 
gates  traveled  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  States  to  learn 
the  trend  of  opinion;  and  a  pretty  general  conclusion  was 
reached  in  the  States  by  the  people  themselves  in  June  1776, 
in  favor  of  a  general  declaration  of  independence  of  Eng 
land  by  the  States  as  sovereign  entities.8 

Congress  really  registered  the  opinion  of  the  country  in 
Lee's  famous  Resolutions  and  the  even  more  notable  docu 
ment  drafted  by  Jefferson  to  embody  them.  On  July  2nd, 
Congress  adopted  the  principle  of  independence;  on  July 
4th,  it  discussed,  amended,  and  accepted  the  document  pre 
pared  by  the  Committee,  and  referred  it  back  to  those  gentle 
men  for  final  verbal  revision.  The  document,  with  which 
we  are  familiar,  was  completed  by  the  committee  some  time 
during  the  night  of  July  4th  and  5th  and  was  printed  and 
published  next  day  by  order  of  Congress.  The  signing  of 
the  document  was  an  afterthought;  the  full  delegation  of 
some  States  had  not  been  present  on  July  4th  and  there  was 
some  fear  that  subsequent  misfortunes  might  set  the  various 
States  seeking  loopholes  through  which  to  escape  equal  re 
sponsibility.  Most  of  the  signatures  were  appended  on  Au 
gust  2nd,  though  a  few  were  affixed  as  late  as  November.9 

The  Declaration  of  Independence  was  a  statement  of  the 

s  The  evidence  has  been  printed  by  J.  H.  Hazelton,  The  Declaration  of 
Independence,  Its  History. 

» The  Journals  of  Congress  are  quite  explicit  on  all  these  points. 
John  Adams  believed  that  July  2  would  be  the  day  celebrated.  Mellen 
Chamberlain  was  the  first  to  explain  how  July  4  came  to  b"e  the  day. 
The  secretary  of  Congress  when  he  came  to  write  up  the  Journal  saved 
himself  the  labor  of  copying  the  text  of  the  Declaration  by  pasting  into 
the  Journal  under  July  4  one  of  the  printed  copies  of  the  document 
with  all  the  signaturas  appended  which  had  been  issued  in  the  autumn 
of  1776  to  give  it  publicity.  When  the  Journal  was  printed  afterwards, 
this  printed  copy  with  the  names  was  included  in  the  official  account 
of  the  proceedings  of  July  4  as  historians  and  the  general  public  re 
ceived  it.  Proceedings  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  for 
November  1884. 


FIRST  ATTEMPTS  AT  PERMANENT  ORGANIZATION       119 

evident  fact  that  the  American  colonies  were  in  reality  and 
long  had  been  independent  of  England;  that  they  had  gov 
erned  themselves  in  the  past  without  assistance  and  could 
do  so  in  the  future;  that  their  interests  were  too  different 
from  those  of  the  mother-country  for  them  to  accept  her 
decisions  in  regard  to  policy.  The  Declaration  of  Independ 
ence  was  also  unquestionably  a  verdict  in  favor  of  a  central 
organization  of  some  sort,  and  might  even  be  argued  to  have 
declared  some  such  government  essential.  But  it  was  an 
even  more  explicit  affirmation  of  the  point  most  important 
to  Americans  in  1776 — the  absolute  sovereignty  of  the  in 
dividual  States  over  their  own  citizens  and  their  complete 
independence  of  each  other.  The  capitalization  of  the  title 
was  itself  freighted  with  meaning:  "A  Declaration  by  the 
representatives  of  the  united  States  of  America,  in  Congress 
assembled."  The  phrases  of  the  document,  which  followed 
the  long  preamble,  were  even  more  explicit:  "The  Repre 
sentatives  of  the  united  States  of  America,1'  "by  authority 
of  the  good  people  of  these  colonies,  solemnly  publish  and 
declare,  That  these  United  Colonies  are,  and  of  Right  ought 
to  be  Free  and  Independent  States. ' ' 10 

The  plunge  once  taken,  the  solemn  pledge  of  the  independ 
ence  of  the  individual  States  of  each  other  and  of  the  central 
government  once  passed,  the  business  of  permanent  organi 
zation  began.  Naturally  enough,  the  lines  of  policy  already 
laid  down  by  the  opposition  to  England  were  followed,  and 
such  permanent  action  as  was  taken  at  once  was  local  and  not 
national.  Some  of  the  States  had  already  formed  new  govern 
ments;  the  others  began  to  make  constitutions  in  the  sum 
mer  and  fall  of  1776.  That  there  might  be  no  excuse  for 
misinterpretation,  most  of  them  explicitly  declared  their  in 
dependence  of  all  other  authority  in  the  world  in  the  pre 
ambles  of  the  new  constitutions.  The  Pennsylvania  Con 
vention  expressed  its  approval  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 

10  This  quotation  is  from  the  parchment  engrossed  copy  in  the  De 
partment  of  State  at  Washington.  The  word  "United"  in  the  last 
clause  is  omitted  in  several  of  the  manuscript  copies. 


120  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

pendence  and  went  on  to  declare  "this,  as  well  as  the  other 
United  States  of  America,  free  and  Independent. ' '  The  Con 
necticut  Assembly  voted  "that  this  Colony  is  and  of  right 
ought  to  be  a  free  and  independent  State."  The  power  of 
the  people,  the  necessity  of  their  confirming  the  work  of  the 
conventions,  a  strong  bi-cameral  legislature,  a  weak  executive, 
the  separation  of  powers,  these  other  legacies  from  the  colo 
nial  period  definitely  shaped  the  form  of  the  new  State 
governments.  Experiments  were  tried,  and,  in  these  suc 
cessive  State  constitutions,  each  of  which  attempted  to  in 
clude  the  good  points  of  those  already  in  operation  and  to 
avoid  the  unsuccessful  expedients,  we  see  gradually  taking 
form  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

Congress  set  to  work  in  1776  upon  a  plan  of  central  govern 
ment,  and,  in  the  meantime,  appointed  various  new  com 
mittees  to  struggle  with  the  obvious  administrative  questions 
whose  solution  was  imperative.  These  were  chiefly  military 
or  connected  with  supplying  the  army  and  navy  with  neces 
sities.  -Ambassadors  to  the  chief  European  nations  were 
promptly  appointed :  Franklin  to  France ;  Adams  to  Holland ; 
Lee  to  England;  Jay  to  Spain.  The  framework  of  a  tem 
porary  central  administration  was  thus  erected.  Gradually 
the  Marine  Committee,  under  the  able  guidance  of  Robert 
Morris,  assumed  chief  place,  and  began  to  develop  a  system 
of  administration  through  agents  in  the  principal  ports  which 
soon  became  adequate  for  most  purposes.  These  Continental 
Agents,  as  they  came  to  be  known,  were  primarily  appointed 
to  receive  and  forward  to  the  army  the  supplies  brought 
from  Europe  or  captured  by  privateers,  but  they  soon  were 
busy  with  various  types  of  work  and  formed  a  network  of 
officials  throughout  America  upon  whom  Congress  more  and 
more  was  forced  to  depend  and  who  became  a  connecting 
link  not  only  between  the  administration  at  Philadelphia 
and  the  States  in  America,  but  between  Congress  and  the 
Ambassadors  and  agents  abroad. 

From  the  first,  the  importance  of  recognition  by  the  Euro 
pean  nations  was  appreciated.  The  knowledge  that  it  could 


FIRST  ATTEMPTS  AT  PERMANENT  ORGANIZATION       121 

not  come  until  America  had  definitely  declared  the  purpose 
of  the  war  and  pledged  itself  to  independence  had  been  a 
prime  factor  in  securing  the  consent  of  the  timid  to  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  Somewhat  to  their  dismay, 
the  leaders  were  informed  that  the  Declaration  was  not  re 
garded  in  Europe  as  sufficient  to  entitle  the  United  Colonies 
to  recognition.  Franklin  had  been  despatched  to  France  to 
obtain  recognition  and  an  alliance,  but  wrote  that  fears  of 
the  inability  of  Washington's  army  to  cope  with  the  English 
and  doubts  as  to  the  stability,  permanence,  and  efficiency  of 
the  alliance  between  the  States  were  nearly  insuperable  ob 
stacles  to  the  conclusion  of  a  treaty.  Congress  was  still  only 
a  body  of  delegates,  whose  decisions  were  at  any  moment 
likely  to  be  reversed  or  disavowed  by  the  sovereign  States, 
a  body  therefore  limited  to  those  decisions  which  it  had 
reason  to  believe  would  not  be  repudiated.  This  lack  of  a 
definite  grant  of  authority,  the  entire  lack  of  certainty  that 
their  commands  would  be  obeyed,  vitally  weakened  the  central 
government  at  a  moment  when  the  exigencies  of  the  war 
required  prompt  and  decisive  action.  It  was  naturally  not 
a  body  upon  whose  solemn  pledge  the  European  govern 
ments  would  rely. 

The  defeat  at  Long  Island,  the  disaster  at  White  Plains, 
the  continued  loss  of  position  after  position  during  the  sum 
mer  of  1776  and  Washington's  retreat  across  the  Jerseys 
upon  Philadelphia  in  the  fall  only  too  clearly  weakened 
support  at  home  and  rendered  aid  from  abroad  unlikely. 
Indeed  the  continued  existence  of  the  army  was  problem 
atical,  and  the  battle  of  Trenton  was  fought  on  December 
25th,  1776,  in  order  to  use  the  army  before  it  should  melt 
away.11  That  overwhelming  success  put  new  life  into  the 

n  "The  present  exigency  of  our  affairs  will  not  admit  of  delay.  .  .  . 
Ten  days  more  will  put  an  end  to  the  existence  of  our  army."  Wash 
ington  to  the  President  of  Congress,  Dec.  20,  1776.  See  also  the  letter 
of  December  24.  Writings  of  Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  V,  113;  124-5; 
127;  129.  "The  militia  must  be  taken  before  their  spirits  and  patience 
are  exhausted."  Reed  to  Washington.  Reed,  Life  of  Joseph  Reed, 
I,  273. 


122  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

army  and  into  Congress  and  convinced  the  English  and  the 
French  that  their  first  conclusions  had  been  mistakes.  "Mr. 
Washington"  had  arrived  to  stay.  The  failure  of  the  Amer 
icans  to  do  more  than  hold  their  own  in  the  spring  of  1777, 
the  failure  to  adopt  some  form  of  central  government  to  take 
the  place  of  the  anomalous  multiple  executive  at  Philadelphia, 
and  the  invasion  of  Burgoyne  from  Canada,  all  had  a  most 
unfavorable  effect  upon  opinion  at  home  and  particularly 
abroad.  No  nation  was  anxious  to  recognize  a  movement 
likely  at  any  instant  to  be  crushed;  to  make  terms  with  a 
central  government  which  was  as  yet  confessedly  a  make 
shift  and  which  seemed  each  month  liable  to  dissolve  from 
internal  dissensions;  or  to  sign  a  treaty  with  a  number  of 
States  which  were  obviously  unable  to  agree  upon  as  funda 
mental  a  point  as  the  expediency  of  having  a  central  govern 
ment  powerful  enough  to  enforce  upon  them  all  a  common 
agreement  or  decision. 

The  surrender  of  Burgoyne  in  October  1777,  decided 
nearly  all  the  outstanding  questions.  The  Congress  at  Phila 
delphia  adopted  the  Articles  of  Confederation  in  November; 
in  December,  the  French  expressed  their  willingness  to  recog 
nize  the  new  government  and  to  sign  a  treaty  of  alliance; 
in  January,  the  English  began  to  draw  up  measures  of  com 
promise  and  treaties  of  peace.  Parliament  and  King  were 
willing  to  yield  anything  short  of  independence.  The  matter 
had,  however,  now  gone  too  far  for  compromise;  the  Amer 
icans  had  agreed  upon  a  new  central  government  from  which 
much  was  expected;  they  were  offered  an  alliance  with  the 
most  powerful  nation  in  Europe,  England's  oldest  and  bitter 
est  foe.  They  considered  the  successful  conclusion  of  the 
war  to  be  mainly  a  question  of  time.  Congress,  therefore, 
rejected  the  English  offers  without  much  hesitation,  and  ac 
cepted  the  alliance  with  France.  Many  and  many  a  dark 
day  was  still  to  dawn,  when  even  the  stoutest  heart  was 
destined  to  quake  from  fear  that  all  was  lost;  but  from  the 
spring  of  1778,  the  ultimate  outcome  of  the  war  seems  really 
never  to  have  been  in  doubt. 


WHY  WE  WON  THE  REVOLUTION 

THE  winning  of  the  Revolution  long  concealed  the  essential 
truth  about  its  military  aspects.  When  historians  and  patri 
otic  speakers  considered  its  trend  at  its  twenty-fifth  and 
fiftieth  anniversaries,  the  fact  that  we  had  won  proved  to 
them  conclusively  that  our  victory  was  due  to  superior  mil 
itary  ability.  It  was  to  them  inconceivable  that  the  success 
ful  conclusion  of  a  great  war,  fought  for  so  high  a  stake 
as  the  independence  of  a  continent,  should  have  been  ac 
complished  by  any  less  decisive  factors  than  the  best  general 
and  the  most  numerous  army.  The  "  survivors ' '  of  Lexing 
ton,  Concord,  and  Bunker  Hill,  who  appeared  in  1825  on 
the  occasion  of  Webster's  memorable  oration,  which  itself 
"made"  history,  were  also  sufficiently  numerous  to  cause  men 
to  believe  irresistibly  that  we  must  have  had  a  large  army 
upon  the  field.  Moreover,  the  victory,  besides  demonstrating 
our  military  efficiency,  was  naturally  supposed  to  prove  that 
the  history  of  the  war  was  the  tale  of  a  triumphant  march 
toward  the  goal  of  independence,  of  which  their  fathers  had 
been  proud,  whose  glories  the  sons  must  venerate  with  en 
thusiastic  and  sincere  devotion,  and  whose  reverses  could  only 
add  to  the  martyristic  halo  already  shrouding  the  patriots 
who  fought  in  it. 

So  strong  indeed  is  the  predisposition  of  every  loyal  Amer 
ican  to  accept  these  conclusions  as  true,  that  historians  have 
long  been  afraid  to  emphasize  the  real  aspects  of  the  war 
for  fear  of  being  charged  with  disloyalty  and  a  disposition 
to  destroy  patriotic  ideals.  No  serious  student  now  denies 
that  we  won  the  war  with  an  army  much  less  numerous  and 
efficient  than  the  British  force  and  with  generals  certainly 

123 


124  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

not  comparable  to  great  European  leaders  like  Caesar  and 
Cromwell.  Indeed,  we  lost,  with  some  striking  exceptions, 
every  battle  of  note.  Lexington,  Concord,1  Bunker  Hill, 
Long  Island,  Brandywine,  Germantown,  Camden,  Guilford's 
Court  House,  were  all  defeats,  and  in  the  battles  we  did  win, 
Trenton,  Bennington,  Saratoga,  Yorktown,  the  Americans  out 
numbered  the  English.  The  glories  of  victory  over  Burgoyne 
are  somewhat  diminished  by  the  knowledge  that  some  six  or 
seven  thousand  British,  without  adequate  provisions  or  am 
munition,  were  surrounded  in  the  woods  by  some  twenty 
thousand  Americans  well  supplied  with  food  and  powder  and 
constantly  reinforced  from  the  surrounding  countryside. 
During  the  campaigns,  the  English  invariably  marched  where 
they  pleased,  and,  except  at  Saratoga,  the  Americans  retreated 
before  them  or  followed.2  From  the  military  point  of  view, 
as  C.  F.  Adams  and  others  have  shown,3  the  Revolution  is 
disappointing  to  the  student  and  patriot  alike.  Nor  were 
the  English  ever  driven  out  of  the  country ; 4  they  ended  the 

1  In  the  technical  military  sense,  the  side  which  remains  in  posses 
sion  of  the  field  is  the  victor  and  there  can  be  no  question  of  the  ability 
of  the  British  to  have  remained  as  long  as  they  liked  on  either  field. 
The   country  was  overjoyed  because  the  Americans  had  not  been  ex 
pected  even  to  attempt  resistance. 

2  Note  for  instance  the  war  from  Long  Island  to  Trenton ;  the  cam 
paigns  of  Howe  against  Philadelphia;   the  campaign  of  Cornwallis  in 
the  South.     Washington  stated  in  a  circular  letter  to  the  States,  dated 
Oct.  18,  1780,  when  the  American  army  was  stronger  and  better  disci 
plined  than  at  any  previous  period  of  the  war,  that  "the  enemy   [are] 
at  full  liberty  to  ravage  the  country  wherever  they  please." 

sC.  F.  Adams,  Studies  Military  and  Diplomatic,  1775-1865.  (1912.) 
The  evidence  is  well  summarized  and  the  foot-notes  contain  an  adequate 
list  of  authorities. 

*The  fact  itself  is  patent:  the  British  army  occupied  New  York  and 
other  sections  until  after  the  Treaty  of  Peace.  Washington  had  made 
up  his  mind  as  early  as  1780  that  the  Americans  alone  could  not  drive 
them  out.  "I  should  not  advise  to  calculate  matters  on  the  principle 
of  expelling  [the  British]  without  the  cooperation  of  the  French  navy. 
...  I  imagine  we  must  of  necessity  adopt  the  principle  of  a  defensive 
campaign."  Washington  to  Baron  Steuben,  Feb.  8,  1780.  Writings  of 
Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  VIII,  194.  "You  know  our  inability  to  expel 
them  unassisted,  or  perhaps  even  to  stop  their  career."  Sparks's  Wash 
ington's  Writings,  VII,  200.  Again  at  206. 


WHY  WE  WON  THE  REVOLUTION  125 

war,  not  because  they  were  defeated,  but  because  they  were 
convinced  of  the  impossibility  of  ever  holding  the  country 
without  subduing  it,  and  of  the  impracticability  of  trying  to 
conquer  and  hold  in  subjection  a  land  of  continental  dimen 
sions,  three  thousand  miles  distant  from  their  own  source  of 
supplies. 

If  we  add  to  this  a  picture  of  the  American  army  at  Cam 
bridge  when  Washington  took  command,  armed  with  pitch 
forks  and  clubs,  and  without  powder  for  such  guns  as  they 
did  have ;  of  the  army,  naked,  hungry,  and  shivering  at  Valley 
Forge,  while  the  Pennsylvania  farmers  carried  their  produce 
into  Philadelphia  to  exchange  for  British  gold ;  5  of  the  whole 
sale  desertion  of  companies  and  regiments  at  critical  mo 
ments;6  of  the  intrigues  to  injure  Washington's  reputation 
by  allowing  him  to  be  defeated  and  so  to  secure  his  removal 
and  to  appoint  Lee  or  Gates  in  his  stead;  we  shall  under 
stand  better  the  gloomy  forebodings  which  filled  the  leaders' 
letters  all  through  the  war.7  The  real  atmosphere  of  the  time 
is  not  triumph  but  despair.  "I  have  seen  without  despond 
ency  even  for  a  moment/'  wrote  Washington  to  George 
Mason,  as  late  as  March  27,  1779,  "the  hours  which  America 
have  [sic]  stiled  her  gloomy  ones,  but  I  have  beheld  no  day 
since  the  commencement  of  hostilities  that  I  have  thought  her 
liberties  in  such  eminent  danger  as  at  present.  .  .  .  Where 

5  On  this  whole  topic  see  L.  C.  Hatch,  The  Administration  of  the 
American  Revolutionary  Army.  (1904.)  The  trade  with  the  British 
soon  became  extensive  and  open.  "While  our  army  is  experiencing 
almost  daily  want,  that  of  the  enemy  in  New  York  is  deriving  ample 
supplies  from  a  trade  with  the  adjacent  States  .  .  .  which  has  by  de 
grees  become  so  common  that  it  is  hardly  thought  a  crime."  Washing 
ton  to  the  President  of  Congress,  Nov.  7,  1780.  Sparks's  Writings  of 
Washington,  VII,  286-7;  and  a  longer  and  more  explicit  statement  on 
p.  401. 

«  "The  militia,  who  come  in,  you  cannot  tell  how,  go,  you  cannot  tell 
when,  and  act,  you  cannot  tell  where,  consume  your  provisions,  exhaust 
your  stores,  and  leave  you  at  last  at  a  critical  moment."  Washington 
to  the  President  of  Congress.  Writings  of  Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  V, 
115  (Dec.  20,  1776)  ;  also  VIII,  290,  292,  503,  506.  An  instructive 
document  is  the  report  of  a  committee  of  Congress  on  deserters  in  Feb., 
1777.  Journals,  Ford's  ed.,  VII,  115-118. 

T  For  instance,  Writings  of  Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  VIII,  503-4. 


126  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

are  our  men  of  abilities?  Why  do  they  not  come  forth  to 
save  their  country  ?  Let  this  voice,  my  dear  friend,  call  upon 
you — Jefferson  and  others — do  not  ...  let  our  hitherto  noble 
struggle  end  in  ignom'y."8  Is  it  likely  that  George  Wash 
ington  would  have  written  as  strongly  as  this  to  as  prominent 
a  man  as  Mason  and  named  a  man  like  Jefferson  if  the  re 
sponse  from  the  country  had  been  as  spontaneously  enthusi 
astic  as  the  older  accounts  assume?  "I  have  seen  in  this 
world,"  wrote  John  Adams,  "but  a  little  of  that  pure  flame 
of  patriotism  which  certainly  burns  in  some  breasts.  There 
is  much  of  the  ostentation  and  affectation  of  it. " 9  These 
words  from  the  men  in  America  who  certainly  should  have 
known  the  facts  are  of  great  significance.  The  Revolution 
was  not  a  time  when  the  exaltation  of  continuous  victory  and 
the  sense  of  superiority  buoyed  up  the  American  leaders  in 
campaigns  of  constant  success,  but  a  time  when  the  keen 
knowledge  of  the  army's  weakness,10  of  the  lukewarmness  of 
the  people,11  and  the  bitter  realization  of  the  ability  of  the 
British  general  to  march  whither  he  would  made  even  Wash 
ington  despair  of  a  favorable  outcome  of  the  war,  long  after 
Trenton  and  Saratoga  had  been  won.  He  remembered,  as  we 
have  too  often  forgotten,  that  the  men  who  fought  at  Bunker 
Hill  were  anxious  to  conceal  their  presence;  that  Parker  vig 
orously  denied  having  fired  at  Lexington  upon  the  British  at 
all ;  that  the  victory  at  Trenton  had  been  since  deprecated  in 
Congress  and  his  own  generalship  seriously  questioned.  The 

s  Writings  of  Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  VII,  382. 

»  Familiar  Letters,  214.     August  18,  1776.     This  was  written  a  little 
more  than  a  month  after  the  passage  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence. 

10  Washington    periodically    doubted    until    1781    whether   the    army 
would  be  in  existence  three  months  hence. 

11  A  French  traveler  thought  that  "there   is  a  hundred  times  more 
enthusiasm  for  the  Revolution  in  the  first  cafe"  you  choose  to  name  at 
Paris   than   there    is    in    all   the    United    States    together."     Stedman, 
American  War,  I,  387.     "The  enemy  are  daily  gathering  strength  from 
the    disaffected,"    Washington   wrote   on   Dec.    20,    1776.     Writings    of 
Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  V,  114.     Also  pp.  124-5.     "The  contest  among 
the  different  States  now  is  not  which  shall  do  most  for  the  common 
cause  but  which  shall  do  least."     Washington  to  Fielding  Lewis,  July 
6,  1780.     Ford's  ed.,  VIII,  335. 


WHY  WE  WON  THE  REVOLUTION  127 

Revolution  was  a  time  of  defeat  and  despair,  and  Washington 
least  of  all  believed  that  the  final  victory  was  due  to  the  win 
ning  of  campaigns  by  a  ragged  and  ill-disciplined  army  over 
a  well-equipped  and  thoroughly  disciplined  force.  He  well 
knew  that  many  factors  contributed  to  the  final  result. 

Yet  the  difficulties  of  the  situation,  far  from  robbing  Wash 
ington  and  his  aides  of  the  glory  that  has  been  so  long  ac 
corded  them,  only  increases  and  intensifies  it.  The  laurels, 
given  a  leader  whom  all  conditions  favor,  whose  army  is 
strong,  whose  countrymen  throng  round  him  with  joy,  are 
in  no  way  comparable  to  the  crown  to  be  awarded  the  general 
who  wins  his  war  without  a  strong  army  and  in  the  face  of 
the  hostility  and  suspicion  of  his  countrymen.  Washington 
and  his  generals  won  the  war  by  the  use  of  the  weapons 
they  did  possess,  which  were  amazingly  effective,  despite  the 
fact  that  some  of  them  appeared  in  military  annals  for  the 
first  time  and  others  were  hardly  military  at  all.  So  far 
as  it  can  be  true  that  any  one  man  ever  did  win  a  war, 
George  Washington  won  the  Revolution  single-handed.  He 
did  not  so  much  lead  the  American  people,  as  drag  them 
after  him  to  a  victory  and  an  independence  which  they  had 
not  entirely  made  up  their  minds  to  seek.  Scientific  research 
has  heightened,  not  diminished,  the  reputations  of  the  leaders. 

Unquestionably  we  won  the  Revolution  because  the  Eng 
lish  did  not  push  the  war  in  1775  and  1776.  Possessed  of 
an  immensely  superior  force,  well-equipped  and  highly  dis 
ciplined,  Lord  Howe  dallied  around  Boston  and  New  York 
when  he  might  have  been  laying  waste  New  England  and 
the  Middle  Colonies  without  any  danger  to  himself.  The 
reasons  for  his  inaction  were  at  the  time  as  little  understood 
in  England  as  in  America.  A  tract  called  A  Succinct  Re 
view  of  the  American  Contest,  printed  in  London  in  1778, 
blamed  generals  and  ministers  severely.  General  Howe  had 
not  prosecuted  a  war  at  all,  declared  the  author,  but  had 
merely  attempted  "to  determine  a  military  wager  between 
him  and  Mr.  Washington,  whom  he,  at  the  head  of  a  limited 
and  small  body  of  English,  had  undertaken  to  fight,  with  all 


128  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

the  Americans  together  in  any  part  of  America  that  Mr. 
Washington  should  choose;  and  that,  to  give  the  Americans 
fair  play,  he  had  obliged  himself  to  do  nothing  that  should 
obstruct  their  assembling. "  The  British,  he  complained,  had 
respected  the  property  of  the  Americans  who  took  the  field, 
and  had  not  interfered  in  the  least  with  the  occupations  of 
those  who  stayed  at  home.  His  brother  on  board  Howe's 
fleet  had  written  that  two  thousand  men  landed  in  Virginia 
11  would  easily  lay  waste  the  whole  province,  but  it  seems  to 
hurt  the  Americans  without  loss  or  danger  to  ourselves  is 
not  the  present  system  of  politics."  Had  Howe  taken  the 
field  in  this  spirit  our  ragged  and  ill-disciplined  army,  which 
Washington  kept  in  existence  only  by  the  greatest  of  ex 
ertions,  must  soon  have  been  destroyed.  Indeed,  as  General 
C.  F.  Adams  has  shown,  only  Howe's  slowness  prevented  its 
complete  annihilation  at  Long  Island.  The  control  of  the  sea 
would  have  enabled  him  to  land  troops  on  every  side  of  the 
American  position  and  would  have  made  impossible  the  escape 
by  sea  of  any  who  slipped  through  his  cordon  on  land.  The 
total  lack  of  both  a  continental  military  and  administrative 
machine  when  the  war  began;  the  jealousies  of  the  States;12 
the  refusal  of  the  militia  to  serve  outside  their  State;  their 
enlistment  for  six  weeks  or  six  months  only;  the  lack  of 
powder  and  shot;  the  quarrels  in  Congress,  must  all  have 
proved  fatal  to  us13  but  for  this  forbearance  of  the  British. 

12  "Unless  the  bodies  politic  will  exert  themselves  to  bring  things 
back  to  first  principles — correct  abuses  and  punish  our  Internal  Foes — 
inevitable  ruin  must  follow.  .  .  .  Our  Enemy  behold  with  exultation 
and  joy  how  we  labor  for  their  benefit,"  Washington  to  Mason,  March 
27,  1779.  Writings  of  Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  VII,  382.  "One  State 
will  comply  with  a  requisition  from  Congress;  another  neglects  to  do 
it;  a  third  executes  it  by  halves;  all  differ  either  in  the  manner,  the 
matter,  or  so  much  in  point  of  time,  that  we  are  always  working  up 
hill  and  ever  shall  be.  ...  We  shall  ever  be  unable  to  apply  our 
strength  or  resources  to  any  advantage.  ...  I  see  one  head  gradually 
changing  into  thirteen."  Washington  to  Joseph  Jones.  Ibid.,  VIII, 
304,  May  31,  1780. 

is  "Nothing  but  the  supineness  or  folly  of  the  enemy  could  have 
saved  us  from  [ruin]."  Washington,  circular  letter  to  the  States,  Oct. 
18,  1780.  Ibid.,  VIII,  503. 


WHY  WE  WON  THE  REVOLUTION  129 

It  has  often  been  called  folly  but  was  really  based  upon  a 
most  careful  study  of  conditions. 

The  English  view  of  the  American  situation  is  not  con 
tained  in  the  speeches  of  Burke  or  Chatham  nor  in  the  tyran 
nical  notions  of  George  III  and  Lord  North  about  repre 
sentation,  but  in  the  ideas  of  the  latter  about  the  factors  in 
America  which  had  produced  the  revolt.  The  King,  the  min 
istry,  and  the  educated  classes  were  firmly  convinced  that 
the  movement  was  the  work  of  a  small  faction,  which  was 
not  supported  by  the  majority  of  the  people.  That  the  colo 
nies  should  forget  their  own  jealousies  and  differences  long 
enough  to  unite  was  to  George  improbable,  and  that  the  few 
leaders  should  be  able  to  weld  together  permanently  such 
inconsistent  elements  was  unthinkable.  The  weakness  of  the 
malcontents,  the  stanch  loyalty  of  a  large  majority  to  Eng 
land,  and  the  jealousies  of  the  States  would  soon  end  the 
struggle,  if  only  the  English  army  did  not  by  plundering 
and  marauding  force  the  waverers  into  opposition  and  com 
pel  them  in  very  truth  to  defend  their  own  firesides.  Given 
time  and  a  little  assistance  at  precisely  the  right  moments, 
the  loyalists  in  America  would  themselves  crush  out  this 
selfish  uprising.  Furthermore,  a  military  conquest  of  Amer 
ica  by  an  English  army  was  highly  inexpedient  if  harmonious 
relations  with  the  colonies  were  to  be  eventually  restored. 
George  and  his  advisers  were  anxious  to  retain  the  allegiance 
of  the  colonists,  and  were  well  aware  that  men  who  had 
been  excited  to  the  point  of  armed  resistance  by  the  mild 
acts  Parliament  had  just  passed  were  certain  to  be  antago 
nized  for  long  years  by  the  burning  of  their  homes  and  the 
death  of  their  loved  ones.  The  King  was  aware  that  a  strong 
minority  in  the  American  Congress  favored  peace  at  any 
price,  that  a  strong  party  in  his  own  Parliament  and  ministry 
also  favored  conciliation,  and  that  the  American  army  was 
barely  kept  alive  by  the  most  desperate  expedients.14  The 

I*  "They  [the  British]  believed  that  when  one  army  expired,  we 
should  not  be  able  to  raise  another;  undeceived  however  in  this  ex 
pectation  by  experience,  they  still  remain  unconvinced,  and  to  me 


130  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

pressing  of  the  war,  then,  until  it  should  become  perfectly 
clear  that  peaceable  overtures  were  futile  and  the  loyalists 
too  weak  to  overpower  the  patriots,  was  the  most  certain 
method  of  promoting  the  very  thing  tie  war  was  being 
fought  to  prevent,  the  loss  of  the  colonies*  allegiance.  The 
English  must  win  the  war  without  alienating  the  Americans. 
A  victory  obtained  in  any  other  fashion  would  be  as  deadly 
as  a  defeat.  Throughout  the  first  two  years  of  the  war, 
therefore,  the  English  ministry  expected  to  end  the  war  as 
much  by  "compromise"  or  negotiation  as  by  a  successful 
campaign.  Lord  Howe  was  to  win  a  decisive  victory  if  he 
could  and  the  sooner  the  better;  but  he  was  not  to  allow 
"Mr.  Washington"  to  disturb  the  forces  working  in  Amer 
ica  for  a  peaceful  settlement,  nor  was  he  to  take  any  risk 
of  disturbing  them  himself,  without  a  practical  certainty 
of  ending  the  war  by  a  crushing  defeat  of  the  Americans. 

Thanks  to  this  politic  forbearance,  we  were  given  the  time 
necessary  to  evolve  an  army  and  a  central  administration  out 
of  nothing.  The  natural  difficulties  of  the  situation  were 
enormous.  Powder,  shot,  arms,  clothing  had  to  be  imported 
and  were  not  only  difficult  to  obtain  but  exceedingly  difficult 
to  distribute  when  secured.  As  the  British  controlled  the 
sea,  everything  had  to  be  carted  overland,  and  this  difficulty 
of  communication  proved  at  times  literally  insuperable.  The 
lack  of  good  currency,  the  lack  of  credit  due  to  the  absence 
of  faith  in  the  successful  outcome  of  the  war,  prevented  any 
general  acceptance  of  the  colonial  paper  money  for  food  and 
such  few  supplies  as  could  be  had  in  America.  Despite  all 
difficulties,  however,  by  1778,  when  the  English  took  up  the 
war  in  earnest,  Yon  Steuben  had  drilled  the  army  into  some 
thing  like  efficiency;  Nathanael  Greene  had  put  the  quarter- 
evidently  on  good  grounds,  that  we  must  ultimately  sink  under  a  sys 
tem  which  increases  our  expense  beyond  calculation,  enfeebles  all  our 
measures,  affords  the  most  inviting  opportunities  to  the  enemy,  and 
wearies  and  disgusts  the  people.  This  has  undoubtedly  had  great  in 
fluence  in  preventing  their  coming  to  terms  and  will  continue  to  operate 
in  the  same  way."  Washington,  circular  letter  to  the  States,  Oct.  18, 
1780.  Writings  of  Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  VIII,  505. 


WHY  WE  WON  THE  REVOLUTION  131 

master's  department  on  its  feet;  Robert  Morris  had  organized, 
through  the  Marine  Committee  of  Congress,  a  series  of  Conti 
nental  Agents  in  the  important  ports  who  had  developed  a 
method  of  exchanging  products,  by  which  the  army  was  sup 
plied  with  what  they  received  from  Europe  and  from  the 
English  supplies  seized  by  American  privateers.  Washington 
had  learned  from  experience  to  avoid  his  first  blunders  and  to 
take  advantage  of  the  natural  forces  fighting  for  us,  as  well 
as  of  the  French  army  and  navy  who  soon  appeared  on  the 
scene.  Indeed,  without  their  aid  and  the  money  and  arms 
Franklin  secured  in  Europe,  it  is  probable  the  Revolution 
would  still  have  failed;  even  the  tact  and  influence  of  Wash 
ington  could  not  have  kept  an  army  in  the  field  longer  with 
out  arms  and  money  from  abroad.15 

The  strategical  geography  of  the  eastern  Atlantic  coast 
plus  the  three  thousand  miles  of  ocean  were  almost  as  deci 
sive  factors  in  our  favor.  The  North  Atlantic  is  always 
difficult  for  sailing-ships,  and  at  that  time  a  month  or  six 
weeks  was  considered  a  quick  passage.  The  English  general, 
therefore,  knew  when  he  began  the  campaign  in  the  spring 
that  three  months  at  least  must  elapse  under  favorable  con 
ditions  before  he  could  receive  instructions  or  assistance.  He 
also  knew  that  the  preparation  of  an  army  for  the  voyage 
was  a  long  task,  needing  two  months  or  more;  for  the  beef 
had  to  be  killed  and  salted;  the  grain  bought,  carried  to 
the  sea-coast,  ground,  and  baked  into  bread;  the  soldiers  en 
listed,  their  clothes  made,  their  guns  provided,  powder  and 
shot  prepared.  To  allow  himself  to  be  defeated  or  out- 
manoeuvered  in  the  early  summer  meant  the  possibility  of 
annihilation  before  help  could  arrive.  Howe  and  Clinton 
campaigned  therefore  in  the  fall  when  the  coming  of  winter 
would  naturally  limit  Washington's  ability  to  take  advantage 
of  possible  successes.  After  all,  they  were  to  win  battles 
if  they  could,  but  at  all  costs  to  keep  an  army  in  the  field.16 

«  See  Washington's  letters  during  1780. 

!«  "Yet  it  is  a  fact,  they  [the  British]  are  as  much  afraid  and  cau 
tious  of  us  as  we  can  be  any  of  us  of  them."  Col.  Smallwood's  report 


132  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Both  protested  and  Howe  complained  energetically  that  the 
army  he  had  was  not  in  the  least  adequate  for  the  military 
occupation  of  the  continent.  In  truth,  he  and  his  generals 
soon  discovered  that  the  Atlantic  seaboard  lacks  a  strategic 
spot  like  that  of  the  Netherlands,  which,  when  taken,  opens 
the  gates  into  several  countries  and  menaces  half  Europe. 
They  found  instead  a  seat  of  war  a  thousand  miles  long, 
intersected  by  many  large  rivers  whose  courses  lay  parallel 
to  each  other,  thus  cutting  the  country  into  large  sections  and 
making  long  overland  marches  most  difficult.  The  English, 
at  first,  thought  Boston  the  strategic  point,  but  were  soon 
disabused:  it  did  not  help  them  to  hold  a  foot  of  land  out 
side  the  lines  of  their  own  fortifications.  Prolonged  resi 
dence  in  New  York  and  Philadelphia  at  last  convinced  them 
that  there  was  no  charmed  spot  in  America  whose  possession 
ensured  the  conquest  of  the  whole.  Instead  they  found  their 
armies  constantly  out  of  touch  with  each  other,  often  on  their 
own  resources,  and  were,  so  far  as  they  could  see,  no  further 
advanced  toward  the  conquest  of  the  continent  by  all  their 
marching  and  countermarching  than  when  they  began.  As 
early  as  the  fall  of  1776,  Howe  realized  the  truth  and  wrote 
home  that  10,000  men  in  New  England,  20,000  in  New  York, 
10,000  in  the  South,  and  an  additional  army  of  10,000  men 
to  operate  against  Washington  would  be  necessary  to  finish 
the  war.17  He  was  laughed  to  scorn  by  the  English  ministry 
who  knew  that  the  total  American  forces  in  the  field  did  not 
number  10,000,  who  were  divided  among  several  armies  and 
were  all  likely  to  go  home  at  any  moment.  When  the  course 
of  events  reluctantly  brought  them  to  the  same  conclusion 
in  1781,  they  gave  up  the  struggle,18  for  the  maintenance 

to  the  Maryland  Council  of  Safety,  Oct.  1776.  Quoted  in  H.  B.  Car- 
rington's  Battles  of  the  American  Revolution,  233. 

17  H.  B.  Carrington,  Battles  of  the  American  Revolution,  254,  279. 

is  "That  one  great  point  [of  Howe's  plan]  is  to  keep  us  as  much 
harassed  as  possible  with  a  view  to  injure  the  recruiting  service  and 
hinder  a  collection  of  stores  and  other  necessaries  for  the  next  cam 
paign,  I  am  as  clear  in,  as  I  am  of  my  existence."  Washington  to  the 
President  of  Congress,  Dec.  20,  1776.  Writings  of  Washington,  Ford's 
ed.,  V,  113.  This  would  end  "the  British  hope  of  subjugating  this 


WHY  WE  WON  THE  REVOLUTION  133 

of  a  permanent  army  of  50,000  men  to  keep  America  in 
subjection  was  too  expensive  a  proposition  to  be  thought  of. 
After  all,  they  reflected,  if  Adam  Smith  was  right,  the  Amer 
ican  trade,  which  was  really  the  only  benefit  they  could 
secure  from  the  possession  of  the  colonies,  would  come  to 
them  anyway. 

While  the  length  of  the  seat  of  war  and  its  intersection  by 
large  rivers  furnished  the  Americans  with  problems  in  trans 
portation  and  in  the  maneuvering  of  armies  fully  as  difficult 
as  those  the  English  experienced,  these  factors  immensely 
reduced  the  discrepancy  between  the  size  and  discipline  of 
the  armies.  The  discipline  of  troops  who  cannot  reach  you  is 
unimportant;  and  the  fact  that  England  possessed  greater 
resources  in  men  and  money  was  neutralized  by  the  difficulty 
the  Atlantic  interposed  in  the  way  of  their  utilization.  The 
two  parties  were  by  no  means  as  ill-matched  for  a  long  strug 
gle  as  at  first  seems.  There  were,  moreover,  numerous  nat 
ural  factors  which  left  the  balance  enormously  in  the  Ameri 
cans'  favor  and  which  in  the  long  run  as  much  as  any  single 
factor  contributed  to  bring  about  the  result. 

The  very  fact  of  the  British  army's  discipline  and  organi 
zation  became  a  hindrance  the  moment  they  left  the  open 
fields  about  the  Hudson  and  Delaware  and  advanced  into 
the  wilds  of  Lake  George  and  the  hill-country  of  North 
Carolina.  A  couple  of  thousand  farmers  in  their  shirt-sleeves 
and  without  any  artillery  and  baggage  would  straggle  across 
fields,  scaling  fences,  penetrating  woods  and  losing  little  if 
anything  of  their  efficiency  in  the  process:  they  had  little  in 
fact  to  lose,  for  the  only  method  of  fighting  they  understood 
called  for  men  behind  trees  and  stone  walls  and  not  arrayed 
in  line  of  battle.  A  British  column,  on  the  other  hand,  could 
not  advance  without  roads,  for  the  trampling  of  many  feet 
and  the  wheels  of  the  artillery  and  baggage-wagons  soon 

continent  either  by  their  arms  or  their  arts.  The  first,  as  I  have  before 
observed,  they  acknowledge  is  unequal  to  the  task;  the  latter  I  am 
sure  will  be  so  if  we  are  not  lost  to  everything  that  is  good  and  virtu 
ous."  Ibid.,  VII,  389. 


134  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

rendered  even  a  dry  field  a  quagmire.  Fences,  rivers,  woods 
were  insurmountable  obstacles.  Burgoyne  spent  days  on  the 
march  south  from  Canada  in  1777  building  roads  and  bridges 
in  order  that  he  might  advance  at  all,  and  consumed  in 
reaching  the  Hudson  as  many  weeks  as  Schuyler's  men  had 
used  days.  Inasmuch  as  few  roads  in  America  were  suffi 
ciently  well  made  to  stand  the  travel  of  an  army,  the  Amer 
icans  possessed  a  positive  advantage  over  the  English  in 
maneuvering,  which  would  have  given  them  victory  after 
victory,  had  not  the  very  lack  of  organization  that  helped 
them  on  the  march  been  a  fatal  deficiency  on  the  field  of 
battle.  The  British,  therefore,  could  rarely  be  dislodged,  but 
could  always  be  eluded.  After  the  first  two  years,  the  Amer 
ican  generals  thoroughly  appreciated  this  fact  and  kept  the 
campaigns  in  territory  which  offered  the  English  the  maxi 
mum  difficulty.  European  strategy,  which  assumed  the  ex 
istence  of  roads  to  march  upon  and  level,  unobstructed  fields 
to  manceuver  upon  was  useless  to  a  general  conducting  a  cam 
paign  which  was  really  a  series  of  contests  with  the  country 
itself  "  Almost  every  movement  of  the  war  in  North 
America,"  wrote  General  Howe,  "was  an  act  of  enterprise 
clogged  with  innumerable  difficulties." 

Then  appeared  the  necessity  of  supplying  the  armies  with 
food.  Here  too  the  very  factors  about  which  Washington  at 
first  chiefly  complained  were  the  Americans'  salvation.  Their 
armies  were,  except  for  the  few  regiments  of  regulars  under 
Washington  himself,  nothing  but  collections  of  minute-men, 
who  assembled  at  the  news  of  the  British  approach,  bringing 
powder  and  shot  and  food  enough  for  ten  days  or  a  fort 
night.  When  any  distance  had  to  be  traversed,  they  marched, 
like  the  North  Carolina  detachment  en  route  northward,  driv 
ing  a  herd  of  cattle  before  them  with  sacks  of  meal  across  their 
backs,  milking  the  cows  and  killing  the  steers  as  need  dic 
tated,  with  the  belief  that  the  herd  would  last  as  long  as  the 
march.  Naturally  the  speed  of  the  march  was  limited  to  the 
slow  pace  of  the  cows.  Once  on  the  field  they  worried  the 
English  column  as  long  as  their  supplies  lasted  and  then  went 


WHY  WE  WTON  THE  REVOLUTION  135 

home,  leaving  the  task  of  defense  to  the  minute-men  of  the 
pext  county ;  and,  inasmuch  as  they  were  all  equally  innocent 
of  tactics  and  discipline,  Burgoyne  or  Cornwallis  found  him 
self  constantly  face  to  face  with  a  fresh  body  of  men,  quite 
as  efficient  as  those  who  had  just  gone  home.  Desertions  and 
short  enlistments  in  fact  worked  little  permanent  injury  to  the 
American  cause.  On  the  other  hand,  the  fact  that  the  Eng 
lish  forces  consisted  of  regular  troops  whose  identity  could 
not  change,  whose  food  must  be  supplied  them,  brought  all 
the  British  generals  into  contact  with  formidable  problems. 
The  difficulties  were  great  enough  in  the  settled  parts  of  the 
country,  because  enough  food  was  not  always  for  sale;  but 
when  the  campaign  was  carried  into  the  wilds  of  the  Hudson 
and  the  hills  of  the  Blue  Kidge,  Burgoyne  or  Cornwallis  found 
that  the  sagacious  Schuyler  or  the  wily  Greene  had  either 
carefully  collected  all  the  food  or  led  him  where  there  was 
none  to  collect.  Nor  could  the  British  generals  cheerfully  sit 
down  to  roasted  sweet  potatoes  as  Marion  did,  or  cabbage 
and  bacon  with  Washington.  They  traveled  with  their  wines 
and  scorned  the  homely  but  nutritious  dishes  of  cornmeal 
mush,  and  the  peas,  beans,  and  turnips  to  which  the  Ameri 
cans  were  accustomed;  such  food,  declared  one  irate  officer, 
was  fit  only  for  swine.  The  soldiers,  too,  refused  such  fare 
and  grumbled  and  became  mutinous  if  the  grog  ran  short. 
Before  the  Saratoga  and  Southern  campaigns  were  over,  how 
ever,  they  were  all  glad  to  eat  anything  they  could  get. 

In  addition,  the  rough  ground  on  which  the  Americans  of 
fered  battle  puzzled  the  English,  and  the  American  generals, 
quickly  noting  this  trouble,  began  soon  the  systematic  use  of 
hills,  fences,  woods,  and  field  entrenchments  for  the  first  time 
in  organized  warfare.  Nor  were  they  ashamed  to  do  what  the 
English  thought  cowardly — "hide"  in  ditches  and  behind 
walls ;  nor  to  do  what  the  English  declared  contrary  to  civilized 
warfare, — pick  off  sentries  and  troops  on  the  march.  Gates 
at  Boston  was  extremely  indignant  to  find  sharpshooters  in 
the  Cambridge  marshes1  shooting  at  his  officers  walking  on  the 
ramparts  for  a  little  fresh  air,  and  Burgoyne  at  Saratoga  was 


136  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

vastly  annoyed  at  the  constant  popping  of  guns  through  the 
night  which  disturbed  his  slumbers  and  at  the  cannon-balls 
that  swept  his  dinner  from  the  table.  But  the  Americans 
were  not  playing  a  game,  where  among  the  forces  on  the  other 
side  were  also  mercenaries,  like  the  Hessians,  and  where 
neither  army  was,  therefore,  desirous  of  exposing  the  other  to 
any  risks  not  unavoidable.  They  were  fighting  to  win  and 
considered  any  means  legitimate  that  would  gain  the  end  in 
view.  Instead  of  being  taught  in  the  European  style,  that 
the  musket  was  too  inaccurate  a  weapon  to  be  of  use  except  for 
volley-firing,  and  that  therefore  anything  more  than  an  ap 
proximate  aim  was  valueless,  Morgan's  sharpshooters  were  ac 
customed  to  a  style  of  fighting  where  they  had  to  kill  their  man 
or  be  killed  themselves. 

The  tactics  of  the  Americans,  however,  were  not  nearly  so 
deadly  in  effect  as  the  result  of  the  rough  ground  on  the 
British  tactics.  There  were  no  orders  in  the  manual  for  climb 
ing  fences  or  for  sending  parts  of  the  column  around  opposite 
sides  of  the  same  boulder,  and  the  formations  of  the  regulars 
were  usually  so  disorganized  by  the  obstacles  nature  had  left 
in  their  path  that  the  weight  of  the  charge  had  been  expended 
before  the  moment  of  impact.  The  equipment  of  the  British, 
complete  and  admirable  for  a  European  campaign,  was  also 
a  positive  hindrance  in  America.  The  red  woolen  shirts,  the 
heavy  fur  or  felt  hats,  the  heavy  knapsacks  and  boots  were 
not  intended  for  a  hot  July  day  with  the  thermometer  at 
ninety  degrees.  Burgoyne  ordered  a  body  of  heavy  dragoons, 
men  so  heavily  equipped  that  they  were  meant  always  to  ride, 
to  march  on  foot  through  the  hills  and  fields  of  southern  Ver 
mont  in  midsummer.  By  the  time  they  reached  Bennington 
they  were  exhausted  from  the  heat  of  their  clothing  plus  the 
heat  of  the  sun  and  were  in  no  condition  to  fight  a  battle 
with  Colonel  Stark  and  his  men  clad  only  in  jeans  and  shirt 
sleeves. 

The  most  puzzling  thing  to  the  English,  however,  became, 
as  the  war  progressed,  the  willingness  of  the  Americans  to  lose 
the  battles.  They  had  expected  the  "farmers"  to  run  at  the 


WHY  WE  WON  THE  REVOLUTION  137 

first  fire,  and  the  Americans  had  entertained  similar  anticipa 
tions.  The  patriotic  joy  over  Concord  and  Bunker  Hill 
brushed  aside  what  seemed  minor  features,  such  as  the  fact 
that  the  English  voluntarily  withdrew  to  Boston  and  that 
Bunker  Hill  was  a  great  defeat,  in  its  elation  over  the  fact 
that  the  minute-men  had  dared  to  follow  the  English  into 
Boston,  and  had  compelled  the  regulars  to  dislodge  them  from 
behind  the  rail  fence.  No  one  at  the  time  thought  either 
battle  accomplished  anything,  but  nearly  every  one  enter 
tained  the  wildest  expectations  of  future  prowess.  Long  Is 
land  and  White  Plains,  however,  convinced  Washington  and 
Greene  that  pitched  battles  were  undesirable  except  as  demon 
strations  of  the  American  determination  to  resist.  They  per 
fectly  well  understood  that  the  most  essential  thing  was  to 
keep  an  army  in  the  field  until  aid  could  come  and  until  the 
natural  factors  working  in  our  favor  should  become  effective ; 19 
they  well  knew  that  in  every  pitched  battle  they  risked  losing 
the  cause  without  a  proportionate  chance  of  winning  it.  They 
realized,  too,  that  the  English  did  not  dare  injure  them  too 
much  and  that  conquest  attained  by  laying  waste  the  country 
was  not  to  be  feared.  Whatever  might  be  done  as  an  ex 
ample  of  possibilities,  there  would  be  no  general  campaign  on 
such  principles.  They  came  in  fact  to  see  that  so  long  as  the 
army  remained  intact,  the  loss  of  the  battle  involved  merely  a 
shift  of  position.  Greene  reduced  the  losing  of  battles  to  a 
science  in  his  operations  in  the  South  in  1780.  Bealizing  that 
a  third  of  his  raw  army  would  run  at  the  first  fire,20  he 

i»  "On  our  side,  the  war  should  be  defensive  (it  has  even  been  called 
a  war  of  posts)  that  we  should  on  all  occasions  avoid  a  general  action, 
nor  put  anything  to  risk,  unless  compelled  by  a  necessity  into  which 
we  ought  never  to  be  drawn.  .  .  .  Experience  has  given  her  sanction. 
.  .  .  Being  persuaded  it  would  be  presumption  to  draw  out  our  young 
troops  into  open  ground  against  their  superiors  both  in  number  and 
discipline,  I  have  never  spared  the  spade  and  pickaxe.  I  confess  I 
have  not  found  that  readiness  to  defend  even  strong  posts  at  all  haz 
ards,  which  is  necessary  to  derive  the  greatest  benefits  from  them.  .  .  . 
The  wisdom  of  cooler  moments  and  experienced  men  have  decided  that 
we  should  protract  the  war  if  possible."  Washington  to  the  President 
of  Congress,  Sept.  8,  1776.  Writings  of  Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  IV,  392. 

20  The  militia  seems  always  to  have  been  unsteady.    "Every  measure 


138  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

placed  them  in  the  first  rank  with  orders  to  fire  one  volley  be 
fore  they  ran  or  the  second  rank  would  shoot  them.  The  sec 
ond  and  third  ranks,  placed  at  wide  intervals,  were  to  let  the 
fugitives  through,  and  when  the  English  appeared,  offer  some 
resistance  themselves,  and  then  retreat  before  they  themselves 
were  harmed.  The  third  rank,  composed  of  experienced 
troops,  would  cover  the  flight  of  their  less  enthusiastic  com 
rades.  The  battle  would  always  be  lost,  but  ten  miles  up  the 
road,  Greene  would  find  his  army  quite  as  before,  save  for  the 
breath  lost  in  running.  Thus  a  blow  was  struck  at  the  British 
without  danger  to  himself,  Cornwallis  was  led  further  and 
further  from  his  source  of  supplies  in  the  fleet  cruising  along 
shore,  was  decoyed  into  the  hills  where  there  was  little  if  any 
thing  to  eat,  and  further  and  further  north  toward  the  gen 
eral  field  of  action  where  Greene  could  expect  some  support. 
The  whole  campaign  is  a  marvelous  example  of  how  wars 
can  be  won  without  good  armies  and  without  winning 
battles. 

After  six  years  of  fruitless  operations,  each  of  which  found 
the  Americans  better  equipped  and  drilled,  more  strongly 
placed,  and  with  a  better  administration  and  a  larger  body  of 
supporters,  the  English  came  to  the  conclusion  that,  to  suc 
ceed,  a  conquest  of  the  country  must  be  executed  with  the  ut 
most  severity  by  an  army  double  in  number  their  total  force 
then  in  the  field  and  that  a  huge  army  of  occupation  must  then 
be  left  behind.  Such  a  price  was  out  of  the  question,  and 
there  were  serious  doubts  in  London  whether  the  payment  even 
of  that  price  would  attain  the  object  of  the  war.  To  conquer 
America  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet  would  effectually  put  an 
end  to  all  harmonious  relations.  The  Treaty  of  Paris  signed 
in  1783  recognized  the  independence  of  the  thirteen  States,  and 

on  our  part,  however  painful  the  reflection  is  from  experience,  is  to  be 
formed  with  some  apprehension  that  all  our  troops  will  not  do  their 
duty."  Washington  to  the  President  of  Congress,  Sept.  8,  1776,  Ibid., 
p.  391.  "The  militia  fled  at  the  first  fire";  they  are  "incapable  of  mak 
ing  or  sustaining  a  serious  attack."  Washington,  circular  letter  to  the 
States,  Oct.  18,  1780.  Ibid.,  VIII,  506.  See  also  the  emphatic  state 
ments  in  letters  of  12  and  15  September  1780. 


WHY  WE  WON  THE  REVOLUTION  139 

handed  over  to  them  the  continent  south  of  the  Great  Lakes, 
east  of  the  Mississippi,  and  north  of  a  rather  indeterminate 
line  very  nearly  that  of  the  present  southern  boundary  of 
Tennessee. 


XI 

THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION 

IN  1781,  John  Adams,  then  Minister  to  Holland,  prepared  a 
pamphlet  called  Twenty-six  Letters  to  explain  to  European 
bankers  that  the  astonishing  but  entirely  desirable  result  of 
the  war  had  been  to  enrich  and  strengthen  the  thirteen  States. 
The  number  of  men  was,  he  declared,  scarcely  impaired;  the 
resources  of  the  country  barely  touched;  the  economic  de 
velopment  of  the  older  communities  had  not  been  retarded; 
the  westward  march  had  continued  at  an  even  more  rapid 
pace.  "America,  notwithstanding  the  war,  daily  increases  in 
strength  and  force."  "America  could  indubitably  maintain  a 
regular  army  of  twenty  thousand  men  forever. ' '  Subsequent 
investigation  has  amply  confirmed  these  observations.  The 
highest  estimate  of  population  in  1760  put  the  figure  well 
under  two  millions;  the  first  census  of  1790  estimated  it  at 
four  millions.  There  was  not  even  a  forswearing  of  luxuries, 
if  the  observation  of  contemporaries  is  trustworthy.1  "The 
extravagant  luxury  of  our  Country, ' '  wrote  Franklin  in  1779, 
*  *  in  the  midst  of  all  its  distresses,  is  to  me  amazing.  When  the 
difficulties  are  so  great  to  find  Remittances  to  pay  for  the 
Arms  and  Ammunition  necessary  for  our  Defence,  I  am  as 
tonish 'd  and  vex'd  to  find  upon  Enquiry,  that  much  the 

i  "I  could  demonstrate,  to  every  mind  open  to  conviction,  that  in  less 
time,  and  with  much  less  expense  than  has  been  incurred,  the  war 
might  have  been  brought  to  the  same  happy  conclusion,  if  the  resources 
of  the  continent  could  have  been  properly  drawn  forth;  that  the  dis 
tresses  and  disappointments,  which  have  very  often  occurred,  have  in 
too  many  instances  resulted  more  from  a  want  of  energy  in  the  con 
tinental  government  than  a  deficiency  of  means  in  the  several  particular 
States."  Washington,  circular  letter  to  the  Governors  of  the  States, 
June  8,  1783. 

140 


THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION        141 

greatest  Part  of  the  Congress  Interest  Bills  come  to  pay  for 
Tea,  and  a  great  Part  of  the  Remainder  is  ordered  to  be  laid 
out  in  Gewgaws  and  Superfluities. '  *  At  least  as  much  tea  was 
being  bought  as  before  the  war,  an  amount,  he  thought,  not 
short  of  £500,000  a  year.  "Five  Hundred  Thousand  Pounds 
Sterling  annually  laid  out  in  defending  ourselves,  or  annoy 
ing  our  Enemies,  would  have  great  Effects.  With  what  Face 
can  we  ask  Aids  and  Subsidies  from  our  Friends,  while  we 
are  wasting  our  own  Wealth  in  such  Prodigality  ? "  2  Wash 
ington  complained  bitterly  and  repeatedly  of  the  farmers  who 
declined  to  sell  grain  to  the  American  army  and  carted  it  to 
Philadelphia  and  New  York  to  sell  it  for  British  gold.3  He 
wrote  of  "  officers,  seduced  by  views  of  private  interest  .  .  . 
to  abandon  the  cause  of  their  country. ' ' 4  * '  If  I  were  to  be 
called  upon  to  draw  a  picture  of  the  times  and  of  men,  from 
what  I  have  seen,  heard,  and  in  part  know,  I  would  in  one 
word  say,  that  idleness,  dissipation,  and  extravagance  seem  to 
have  laid  fast  hold  of  most  of  them ;  that  speculation,  pecula 
tion,  and  an  insatiable  thirst  for  riches  seem  to  have  got  the 
better  of  every  other  consideration  and  almost  every  order  of 
men. ' '  6  ' '  The  spirit  of  venality, ' '  wrote  John  Adams,  ' '  is  the 
most  dreadful  and  alarming  enemy  America  has  to  op 
pose.  ...  I  am  ashamed  of  the  age  I  live  in."  6 

Nor  is  the  seeming  inconsistency  of  this  most  striking  result 
of  the  war  hard  to  reconcile  with  our  earlier  notions  of  the 
result.  The  picture  of  war  which  naturally  rises  before  our 
eyes  depicts  murder,  pillage,  and  general  desolation.  An 
army  would,  of  course,  devour  everything.  During  the  Revo 
lution,  however,  the  armies  were  at  no  time  large  and,  there 
fore,  were  not  unduly  burdensome  to  the  community  in  the 

2  The  Life  and  Writings  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  A.  H.  Smyth,  VII, 
391,  291.     See  also  pp.  83,  258,  408. 

3  See  supra,  p.  125,  note.     See  also  Connecticut  Public  Records,  I,  528 ; 
Rhode  Island  Records,  VII,  388;  Delaware  Session  Laws,  May  20,  1778. 

*  Writings  of  Washington,  Sparks's  ed.,  V,  305,  312,  313,  322,  351; 
VI,  168. 

5  Writings  of  Washington  Ford's  ed.,  VII,  388. 
e  Familiar  Letters,  232. 


142  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

strictest  sense  of  the  words.  Both  realized  that  pillage  or 
foraging  would  throw  many  waverers  into  the  ranks  of  their 
enemies,  and,  from  motives  of  policy,  both  conducted  the  war 
with  a  view  to  avoiding  all  possible  cause  of  complaint  from 
non-combatants.  Indeed,  far  from  being  a  hardship  to  the 
Americans,  the  presence  of  the  British  army  was  a  positive 
blessing.  For  the  first  time  in  colonial  history,  a  large  and 
steady  market  for  the  produce  easily  raised  in  America  was 
located  at  the  fanner's  very  door;  and  the  British  paid  him 
not  in  bills  on  London  which  turned  out  to  be  bad,  or  in  de 
preciated  silver  or  in  paper  currency,  but  in  gold  at  sterling 
rates.  Probably  there  was  more  actual  coin  in  America  in 
1783  than  ever  before.7  The  farmers  charged  war  prices,  sold 
more  than  ever  before,  and  waxed  rich  as  the  war  continued, 
especially  in  the  Middle  States  where  the  British  occupation 
lasted  several  years.  The  American  armies  also  paid,  and 
their  paper  promises  were  not  long  afterwards  funded  at  par. 
Business  was  good  during  the  Revolution ;  the  community  un 
deniably  grew  wealthy. 

At  the  same  time,  many  and  many  an  individual  suffered 
severely.  English  privateers  captured  the  merchants'  vessels; 
committees  of  correspondence  confiscated  the  estates  of  exiles 
and  loyalists,  and  compelled  merchants  to  accept  the  nearly 
worthless  paper  money  from  the  patriots  at  a  tariff  which  in 
many  cases  amounted  to  the  confiscation  of  the  goods.  "Per 
sons  who  refused  to  sell  their  lands,  houses,  or  merchandize  for 
nearly  worthless  paper  were  stigmatized  as  misers,  traitors, 
forestallers,  and  enemies  of  liberty.  .  .  .  Stores  were  closed 
or  pillaged;  and  merchants  were  mobbed,  fined,  or  impris 
oned,  ' ' 8  tarred  and  feathered,  or  ridden  on  rails.  The  war 
automatically  suspended  the  collection  of  debts  owed  by  Ameri- 

7  "Tho*  the  public  treasury  was  so  very  poor  and  distressed,  yet 
the  States  were  really  overrun  with  an  abundance  of  cash :  the  French 
and  English  armies,  our  foreign  loans,  Havanna  trade,  etc.,  had  filled 
the  country  with  money,  and  bills  [of  exchange]  on  Europe  were  cur 
rently  sold  at  20  to  40  per  cent  below  par."  Peletiah  Webster,  Political 
Essays,  267.  Philadelphia,  1791. 

s  Bullock,  Monetary  History  of  the  United  States,  66. 


THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  143 

cans  abroad,9  and,  as  these  liabilities  far  exceeded  in  amount 
the  money  which  foreigners  owed  Americans,  the  country 
as  a  whole  was  again  made  richer  by  the  war,  for  no  arrange 
ment  was  ever  subsequently  made  to  liquidate  any  consider 
able  part  of  the  pre-revolutionary  debts.  Of  course,  the  debts 
owed  the  loyalists  and  exiles  were  promptly  repudiated  or 
confiscated.  In  all  these  ways,  very  considerable  amounts 
of  property  changed  hands,  and  made  many  individuals  much 
richer  than  before  at  the  expense  of  a  comparatively  small 
number  of  other  individuals.  The  transfer  from  loyalist  to 
patriot,  of  course,  in  no  way  lessened  the  total  assets  of  the 
community,  while  the  repudiation  of  foreign  debts  actually 
added  great  sums  to  the  community's  wealth. 

The  general  fall  of  values  and  the  equally  general  rise  in 
prices  coupled  to  the  existence  of  large  amounts  of  depreciated 
currency  suggested  to  many  of  the  unscrupulous, — whose  ex 
istence  in  past  epochs  is  a  constant  source  of  amazement  to 
many  who  are  familiar  with  the  existence  of  that  type  of 
man  to-day — the  payment  of  debts  incurred  at  the  old  scale 
of  prices  in  the  new  paper  money.  Guardians  and  trustees 
accounted  in  paper  for  the  funds  entrusted  to  them  in  specie, 
and  thus  were  able  to  embezzle  the  greater  part.  "For  two 
or  three  years,"  wrote  Witherspoon,  "we  constantly  saw  and 
were  informed  of  creditors  running  away  from  their  debtors, 
and  debtors  pursuing  them  in  triumph  and  paying  them  with 
out  mercy ! ' '  The  lack  of  a  suitable  medium  of  exchange  thus 
deprived  all  people  dependent  on  a  salary  or  on  a  fixed  income 
from  investment  of  the  great  bulk  of  their  fortunes.  Every 
one,  too,  in  whose  hands  paper  money  depreciated  in  value 
lost  considerable  sums.  These  indirect  consequences  of  the 

e  There  was  no  reason  why  it  should  have  done  so,  save  that  most 
Americans  believed  themselves  no  longer  liable  because  political  inde 
pendence  would  effectually  prevent  collection  through  the  English  courts 
or  by  English  law,  and  naturally,  until  the  war  was  over,  no  new 
system  for  collection  would  be  erected.  The  general  sentiment  in  favor 
of  repudiation  of  public  and  private  debts  was  overwhelmingly  strojig 
in  1783.  With  these  difficulties  the  Confederation  struggled  feebly  and 
in  vain. 


144  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Revolution  certainly  brought  distress  to  many,  who  usually 
least  deserved  it,  but  who  were  on  the  whole  best  able  to  bear 
it. 

During  the  Revolution,  then,  the  general  resources  of  the 
community  were  enormously  increased  by  agriculture  and 
commerce;  the  war  destroyed  little  and  added  appreciably  to 
the  wealth  of  the  country  and  to  its  store  of  gold ;  the  wealth 
was  redistributed  and  in  general  equalized  among  individuals, 
very  much  to  the  advantage  of  those  who  had  been  poor, 
very  much  to  the  detriment  of  those  who  had  been  rich.  The 
latter  seem  to  have  been  the  ones  really  to  suffer  from  the 
war,  and  were  chiefly  loyalists  and  in  many  cases  exiles. 
They  and  the  foreign  and  domestic  creditors  of  Congress  and 
of  the  States  paid  for  the  Revolution,  for  the  confiscated  prop 
erty  was  never  restored,  and  most  of  the  original  holders  of 
the  Revolutionary  debt  sold  their  bonds  or  certificates  at  heavy 
loss,  when  the  very  general  repudiation  of  the  Revolutionary 
indebtedness  at  the  end  of  the  war  convinced  them  that  the 
debt  would  never  be  paid  and  that  they  would  do  well 
to  sell  before  the  evidences  of  their  loans  lost  all  market 
value. 

The  Revolution  had  been  a  war  between  England  and 
America,  between  parties  in  England  and  between  parties  in 
America,  and  the  issue  had  been  the  institution  of  a  central 
administration  in  America  sufficiently  powerful  to  enforce  the 
new  policy  which  Parliament  had  adopted  for  the  creation  of 
a  greater  Britain.  Something  more  had  divided  parties  than 
the  bare  question  whether  or  not  England  should  play  a  part, 
decisive  or  otherwise,  in  the  settlement  of  questions  in 
America.  The  immediate  result  of  the  American  victory  was, 
therefore,  something  more  than  the  decision  that  the  two 
countries  should  hereafter  be  separate  and  that  Americans 
should  formulate  policy  for  themselves  without  British  assist 
ance  or  interference.  In  England,  the  American  victory  was 
a  victory  for  the  peace  party  who  had  throughout  declared 
the  policy  on  which  the  war  had  been  conducted  a  mistake. 
The  winning  of  the  war  gave  control  in  America  to  the 


THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION         145 

radicals,  to  the  anti-national  party,  opposed  on  principle  to 
the  adoption  of  the  English  notion  of  strong  central  govern 
ment.  It  also  immensely  strengthened  the  anti-national  party 
and  weakened  in  numbers,  in  wealth,  and  in  the  proportion 
of  capable  and  educated  men  amongst  them,  the  creditor 
and  conservative  parties  which  believed  in  strong  govern 
ment. 

The  number  of  loyalists  expatriated  was  probably  about 
one  hundred  thousand,  most  of  whom  had  been  people  of 
culture  and  property,  who  had  normally  counted  on  the  side 
of  law,  order,  and  justice.  Very  considerable  amounts  of 
property  had  also  been  changed  during  the  war  by  both 
political  and  economic  forces  from  the  hands  of  the  conserva 
tives  to  those  of  the  radicals.  The  proportion  of  educated 
men  in  the  country  was  not  as  large  as  it  had  been ;  the  total 
wealth  of  the  conservative  class  was  far  less  than  before. 
The  radical  party  had  not  only  gotten  into  the  saddle  in 
State,  town,  and  county,  but  had  possessed  itself  in  all  proba 
bility  of  the  bulk  of  the  movable  property,  and  was  anxious 
to  continue  conditions  which  worked  so  greatly  to  its  ad 
vantage.10  The  party  of  strong  government  and  especially  of 
national  government,  as  we  understand  it,  had  been  com 
pletely  vanquished  by  the  party  of  loose  government  and  of 
States '  rights.  The  victory  of  the  radicals  in  the  ' '  civil  war, '  ' 
in  fact,  was  too  complete,  as  was  soon  to  appear. 

Had  the  Revolution,  however,  decided  the  various  issues 
over  which  it  had  nominally  been  fought?  Had  it  proved 
England  wrong  in  all  her  contentions,  shown  George  III  to 
have  been  a  bloodthirsty  tyrant  and  Lord  North  an  oppressor  ? 
Were  the  loyalists  all  traitors  and  was  their  property  forfeit  ? 
The  radicals  insisted  with  vehemence  that  victory  had  demon 
strated  the  truth  of  all  their  contentions,  legal,  historical, 

10  "It  is  more  consistent  with  the  views  of  the  speculators — various 
tribes  of  money-makers  and  stock-jobbers  of  all  denominations — to  con 
tinue  the  war  for  their  own  private  emolument  without  considering 
that  their  avarice  and  thirst  for  gain  must  plunge  everything,  includ 
ing  themselves,  in  one  common  ruin."  Washington  to  George  Mason, 
March  27,  1779.  Writings  of  Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  VII,  382. 


146  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

political,  and  ethical.  The  legacy  of  the  Revolution  was  a 
hatred  of  England  and  of  English  ways  which  for  many  dec 
ades  colored  all  policies  and  politics. 

The  war  had  been  fought  with  England  over  an  issue  of 
administration  and  organization.  It  had  been  a  war  to  main 
tain  the  superiority  of  State  governments  over  any  central 
government,  a  war  to  prevent  the  erection  of  a  central 
government,  a  war  to  support  a  distinctly  anti-national  policy. 
To  the  radicals,  therefore,  the  winning  of  the  Revolution  de 
cided  that  the  States  were  supreme  and  a  central  government 
inexpedient.  Were  the  patriots  who  had  fought  and  bled  for 
the  independence  of  their  own  particular  States  to  admit  that 
the  war  had  succeeded  and  had  vested  in  King  Congress  the 
powers  of  King  George  ?  If  so,  they  had  exchanged  a  tyrant 
three  thousand  miles  away,  who  was,  after  all,  slow  and  stupid, 
for  a  many-headed  hydra  at  their  very  doors,  insatiable  in  its 
demands  for  money  and  authority.  For  what,  then,  had  they 
fought?  Again,  the  wrar  had  been  waged  to  prevent  the  ex 
ercise  by  any  central  authority  of  the  right  of  taxation  and 
the  right  to  control  commerce.  Had  not  the  winning  of  the 
war  definitely  vested  the  exclusive  exercise  of  these  powers  in 
the  several  States,  and  as  definitely  decided  once  and  for  all 
that  no  central  government  ought  ever  to  possess  them  ?  If  the 
Revolution  had  not  settled  the  issues  in  these  ways,  what  had 
it  decided  ?  Nothing  ? 

Nevertheless,  the  Revolution  actually  decided  none  of  the 
great  questions  out  of  which  it  had  arisen.  It  decided  merely 
that  England  and  the  conservatives  in  America  should  have 
no  share  in  their  decision.  The  anti-national  party  assumed 
the  direction  of  policy  and  was  not  slow  to  announce  and  ap 
ply  its  characteristic  remedies  to  the  solution  of  all  difficulties. 
Were  the  men  who  had  won  the  Revolution  unable  to  cope 
with  the  problems  of  freedom?  The  key  they  applied  to  all 
perplexities  was  the  old  colonial  conception — States'  sover 
eignty.  Neither  the  Revolution  itself  nor  any  specific  act 
done  during  it  or  because  of  it  seemed  to  the  radicals  to  have 
created  a  nation  or  to  have  even  established  the  desirability 


THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  147 

of  creating  one.11  "It  seems  certain  that  at  no  time  during 
the  Revolution  was  there  a  stronger  desire  for  national  unity 
than  for  the  continued  sovereignty  of  the  several  States. ' ' 12 
The  central  government  was  to  be  rather  a  common  mouth 
piece,  a  sort  of  formal  head,  a  convenient  method  of  express 
ing  the  decisions  of  the  States,  than  a  government  empowered 
to  act  for  them. 

During  the  war,  the  States  had  one  and  all  exercised  the 
familiar  attributes  of  sovereignty.13  Virginia  made  and  rati 
fied  a  treaty  with  France;  established  a  clerkship  of  foreign 
correspondence;  sent  over  an  agent  to  various  countries  to 
borrow  money  and  buy  arms ;  negotiated  formally  with  Spain 
for  a  war  loan;  sent  George  Rogers  Clark  into  the  West  to 
take  possession  of  the  land  in  the  name  of  the  Commonwealth 
of  Virginia.  Nine  of  the  States  built  navies  of  their  own  and 
all  enlisted  armies ;  all  of  them  struck  coins  and  issued  paper 
money;  most  of  them  regulated  commerce  by  the  imposition 
of  tariffs  and  of  embargoes.  These  powers  they  continued  to 
exercise  after  the  Articles  of  Confederation  had  been  formally 
ratified  in  1781  and  after  the  Treaty  of  Peace  had  been  signed 
in  1783.  Neither  one  event  nor  the  other,  to  the  thinking  of 
the  men  in  control  of  the  State  governments,  produced  any 
change  in  the  relation  of  the  States  to  each  other  or  to  a  cen- 

11  "A  selfish  habitude  of  thinking  and  reasoning  leads  us  into  a  fatal 
error  the  moment  we  begin  to  talk  of  the  interests  of  America.     The 
fact   is,  by  the   interests   of  America  we   mean  only   the   interests   of 
that  State  to  which  property  or  accident  has  attached  us.     Thus  a  citi 
zen  of  Philadelphia,  when  he  harangues  on  the  rights  and  liberties  of 
America,  is  not  aware  the  while  that  he  is  merely  advocating  the  rights 
and  liberties  of  Pennsylvania.     And  our  fellow-citizen  here,  .  .  .  lead 
him  to  the  westernmost  banks  of  the  Hudson  .  .  .  and  his  heart  is  as 
cold  and  unconcerned  as  to  the  interests  of  Kouli  Khan  or  the  Nabob 
of  Arcot."     New  'York  Packet,  August  30,  1784.     Quoted  by  McMaster, 
History  of  the  People  of  the  United  States,  I,  136. 

12  Van  Tyne,  The  American  Revolution,  177-8. 

13  C.  H.  Van  Tyne  has  given  an  admirable  resume"  of  the  evidence  in 
the  American  Historical  Review,  XII,  529-545.     See  also  the  selections 
quoted  in  Hart's  American  History  Told  by  Contemporaries,  III,   124- 
137.     Even  a  casual  reference  to  any  source  of  the  period  will  hardly 
fail  to  be  rewarded  with  significant  examples. 


148  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

tral  government.  Congress  was  to  assume  the  position  which 
the  radicals  had  desired  George  III  to  occupy: — that  of  as 
sisting  and  advising  the  several  States.  Indeed,  there  was 
little  disposition  to  admit  in  America  that  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  had  done  more  than  enounce  the  actual  condi 
tion  of  affairs  or  that  the  war  had  accomplished  more  than 
the  prevention  of  the  unwarranted  extension  of  authority  pro 
posed  and  attempted  by  England.  The  States  were  still 
sovereign  as  they  always  had  been;  in  their  several  hands 
rested  the  solution  of  the  difficulties,  and  they  believed  them 
selves  as  capable  of  deciding  upon  and  executing  such  meas 
ures  as  their  own  welfare  and  safety  demanded  as  they  had 
already  been  for  a  century  and  more.  That  the  growth  of 
the  country  during  the  preceding  century  and  even  during 
the  war  had  made  some  common  action  and  agreement  indis 
pensable,  only  a  few  individuals  seem  to  have  grasped. 

The  solution  proposed  by  the  radical  anti-national  party 
was,  therefore,  simplicity  incarnate, — the  States  should  in 
dividually  deal  as  they  thought  best  with  such  matters  as 
seemed  to  them  to  require  action,  and  should  signify  to  Con 
gress  what  action  they  deemed  necessary  in  questions  re 
quiring  cooperation.  There  seems  to  have  been  a  rather  gen 
eral  expectation  that  the  remedies  for  the  various  .difficulties 
would  evolve  themselves  from  circumstances,  for  no  action 
was  taken  on  most  questions. 

The  fear  that  the  Americans  would  be  excluded  from  the 
West  India  trade  and  the  Newfoundland  fisheries  had  been 
one  of  the  motive  forces  of  the  Revolution.  The  war  over, 
most  men  seem  to  have  expected  that  the  old  status  would  be 
reestablished  and  that  the  Americans  would  continue  as  be 
fore  to  smuggle  at  will,  unhampered  now  by  English  revenue 
officers  and  administrative  restrictions.  They  had  fought  to 
obtain  that  privilege,  and,  having  won  the  war,  was  the  sug 
gestion  to  be  credited  that  the  prize  was  not  theirs  ? 

The  pay  of  the  army  which  had  won  the  war  was  some 
years  in  arrears,  and  the  officers  and  men,  who  had  been 
held  together  by  promises  of  prompt  payment  upon  the  sue- 


THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  149 

cessful  conclusion  of  the  war,  were  already  manifesting  some 
thing  more  than  impatience  at  the  non-fulfilment  of  the 
promises.  The  interest  payments  on  the  debts  incurred  dur 
ing  the  war  by  Congress  and  by  the  several  States  were  al 
ready  overdue,  and  in  many  cases  payment  of  the  capital  had 
been  promised  on  the  successful  completion  of  the  war.  A 
uniform  and  stable  currency  was  desperately  needed  to  re 
place  the  worthless  paper  which  no  longer  circulated  at  all. 
In  addition,  the  Treaty  of  Peace  contained  promises  made  by 
Franklin  and  other  ambassadors,  concerning  the  payment  of 
the  debt,  public  and  private,  the  restoration  of  the  property  of 
loyalists,  the  repeal  of  the  acts  passed  during  the  war  which 
deprived  the  latter  of  all  rights,  legal  or  social,  in  the  com 
munity,  and  the  prompt  adjustment  of  the  boundary  diffi 
culties  in  the  West. 

Incredible  as  it  may  seem,  the  anti-national,  States '-sover 
eignty  party  was  in  favor  of  disbanding  the  army  without  pay 
and  without  the  fulfilment  of  one  of  the  many  promises  made 
to  both  officers  and  men.  The  army  very  naturally  refused 
with  considerable  heat  to  disband  and  remained  in  the  neigh 
borhood  of  Philadelphia  for  some  years,  grumbling  and  threat 
ening  Congress,  while  the  States  blithely  continued  to  disre 
gard  their  obligations  to  the  men  who  had  actually  fought  the 
war.  Inasmuch  as  none  of  the  various  creditors,  foreign  or 
domestic,  possessed  any  method  of  exacting  payment  of  the 
principal  or  the  interest  of  the  Kevolutionary  debt,  the 
radicals  calmly  repudiated  all  their  obligations  and  declined  to 
vote  a  penny  to  Congress  for  any  such  purpose,  or  indeed  for 
any  purpose  at  all.14  To  cap  the  climax  of  this  policy  of 

14  On  Nov.  5,  1786,  Washington  wrote  Madison  a  description  of  con 
ditions  in  New  England  as  reported  to  him  by  General  Knox,  who  had 
been  sent  by  Congress  to  investigate  the  situation.  "Among  other 
things  he  says:  'Their  creed  is,  that  the  property  of  the  United  States 
has  been  protected  from  the  confiscation  of  Britain  by  the  joint  exer 
tions  of  all;  and  therefore  ought  to  be  the  common  property  of  all; 
and  he  that  attempts  opposition  to  this  creed,  is  an  enemy  to  equity 
and  justice,  and  ought  to  be  swept  from  off  the  face  of  the  earth.' 
Again :  'They  are  determined  to  annihilate  all  debts,  public  and  private, 
and  have  agrarian  laws,  which  are  easily  effected  by  the  means  of 


150  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

laissez-favre,  none  of  the  States  executed  the  solemn  promises 
of  the  Treaty  of  Peace  and  enough  were  always  opposed  to 
any  action  on  the  part  of  Congress  to  prevent  fulfilment  by 
the  Confederation.  From  whatever  motive,  whether  from 
policy  or  from  preoccupation  with  other  problems,  nothing 
whatever  was  done.  The  consequences  of  this  universal  appli 
cation  of  the  anti-national  remedy  of  States'  sovereignty  to 
the  difficulties  confronting  America  were  all  too  soon  appar 
ent.  "How  melancholy  is  the  reflection,"  wrote  Washing 
ton  to  Madison  on  November  5,  1786, ' '  that  in  so  short  a  space 
we  should  have  made  such  large  strides  towards  fulfilling  the 
predictions  of  our  transatlantic  foes!  *  Leave  them  to  them 
selves  and  their  government  will  soon  dissolve.'  Will  not 
the  wise  and  good  strive  hard  to  avert  this  evil?  Or  will 
their  supineness  suffer  ignorance  and  the  arts  of  self-inter 
ested,  designing,  disaffected  and  desperate  characters  to  in 
volve  this  great  country  in  wretchedness  and  contempt  ? "  15 

unfunded  paper  money,  which  shall  be  a  tender  in  all  cases  whatever.'  " 
Writings  of  Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  XI,  81-2. 
p.  82. 


XII 
THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD 

FROM  the  war,  the  radicals  had  expected  great  things.  Once 
the  shackles  of  the  tyrant  had  been  struck  off,  Liberty  would 
ensure  her  admirers  happiness  and  prosperity.  Yet,  with  the 
Treaty  of  Peace  scarcely  signed,  with  the  policy  of  the  thirteen 
new  sovereigns  barely  promulgated,  and  the  perpetuity  of 
the  new  Confederation  between  them  little  more  than  de 
clared,  it  became  only  too  apparent  that  the  country  was 
worse  off  than  it  had  been  before.  Whatever  might  be  the 
theoretical  merits  of  the  new  type  of  government,  certainly 
its  practical  results  were  disastrous.  The  policy  of  laissez- 
faire,  of  disregarding  problems,  simply  did  not  work.  The 
army  refused  to  disband  and  continued  to  live  in  the  vicinity 
of  Philadelphia  to  the  great  discontent  of  the  farmers  of  the 
district.  The  difficulties  resulting  from  the  lack  of  a  stable 
currency  grew  steadily  worse  and  not  better.  The  failure  to 
pay  the  interest  or  principal  of  the  old  debt  made  impossible 
the  borrowing  of  money.  The  English  were  by  no  means  will 
ing  to  dispense  with  the  fulfilment  of  the  promises  in  the 
Treaty  of  Peace  about  the  western  lands,  while  the  all-impor 
tant  trade  privileges  in  the  West  Indies  and  off  Newfoundland 
could  not  be  obtained  by  a  weak  and  discredited  government, 
which  had  thus  far  defaulted  every  payment  and  broken  every 
promise. 

The  pressure  of  national,  State,  and  local  issues  for  settle 
ment  was  great  in  1783  and  was  growing  obviously  greater; 
the  economic  and  social  problems  demanding  honest  and  sin 
cere  effort  were  numerous.  The  chief  difficulties  were,  how 
ever,  two : — the  lack  of  honest,  able,  consistent  administration 
in  the  States  and  in  the  central  government,  and  the  existence 

151 


152  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

of  the  first  commercial  crisis,  due  partly  to  the  economic  tangle 
caused  by  the  war,  but  largely  to  the  lack  of  a  reliable  medium 
of  exchange  either  with  Europe  or  between  the  various  States. 
In  fact,  the  difficulties  were  economic  rather  than  administra 
tive,  were  indeed  superficial  rather  than  fundamental,  and 
resulted  from  administrative  carelessness  and  inefficiency, 
from  the  policy  of  repudiation  and  of  ignoring  vital  prob 
lems.  The  truly  fundamental  difficulties  lay  in  the  economic 
position  of  the  States  in  relation  to  each  other,  to  the  West 
Indies,  and  to  Europe.  Nor  would  the  administrative  de 
ficiencies  alone  have  been  so  serious  had  they  not  coincided 
with  the  commercial  crisis.  All  the  difficulties,  temporary  and 
fundamental,  economic  and  administrative,  were  accentuated, 
magnified,  and  multiplied  by  the  attempts  of  the  radicals  to 
solve  them.  Before  peace  was  a  year  old,  it  was  clear  to  the 
leaders  and  was  constantly  becoming  apparent  to  a  larger 
and  larger  section  of  the  community,  that  the  radical  solution, 
based  on  the  theoretical  and  administrative  contentions  over 
which  the  war  had  been  fought,  was  a  hopeless  and  irredeem 
able  failure. 

The  economic  crisis  was  the  result  of  production  far  in 
excess  of  local  needs  coupled  with  a  very  general  lack  of  ade 
quate  means  of  exchange  and  distribution.  As  has  already 
been  explained,  the  Atlantic  coast  produced  chiefly  staple 
goods — cod-fish,  lumber,  flour,  horses, — for  which  no  adequate 
market  existed  in  other  colonies,  which  were  (except  for  to 
bacco)  too  bulky  to  ship  to  Europe,  and  which  would  usually 
be  sold  only  in  the  West  Indies.  At  the  same  time,  the  manu 
factured  articles,  upon  which  the  Americans  depended  and 
which  they  bought  so  largely,  must  come  from  Europe.  We 
were  then  in  the  extremely  unfortunate  economic  position 
of  producing  what  we  could  not  consume  and  what  the 
makers  of  the  only  articles  we  really  wished  to  buy  would  not 
accept  in  exchange.  The  prosperity  of  the  new  sovereign 
States  was  absolutely  dependent  upon  the  ability  to  sell  in  the 
West  Indies  and  to  purchase  the  sugar  and  molasses  which 
Europe  so  greedily  bought.  A  principal  incitement  to  re- 


THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD  153 

sistance  in  1775  had  been  the  knowledge  that  all  the  West 
India  sugar  islands  together  barely  furnished  the  Atlantic  sea 
board  with  an  adequate  market  for  its  growing  volume  of 
produce,  and  that  the  exclusion  of  the  Americans  from  the 
foreign  sugar  islands  and  the  restriction  of  their  trade  to  the 
English  sugar  colonies  would  prevent  the  further  expansion 
of  American  trade,  if  it  did  not  immediately  glut  the  market 
and  send  prices  tumbling.  To  retain  the  freedom  of  trade 
with  all  the  West  India  Islands,  English,  French,  Spanish, 
Dutch,  and  Danish,  had  been  the  best  reason  for  the  refusal  to 
obey  the  Navigation  Acts,  the  Sugar  Act  of  1764,  and  the 
English  administrative  regulations,  and  was  one  of  the  really 
cogent  reasons  for  fighting  the  war  at  all. 

Apparently,  the  Americans  had  expected  their  victory  to 
result  in  a  more  complete  freedom  of  intercourse  with  the  rest 
of  the  world,  and  they  learned  with  scarcely  feignable  as 
tonishment  that  they  had  lost  their  rights  in  the  English  sugar 
islands  and  in  the  cod-fisheries  off  the  Grand  Banks  without 
gaining  any  rights  in  the  sugar  colonies  of  other  nations.1 
They  found  that  they  had  no  rights  anywhere;  that  every 
American  vessel  in  the  West  Indies  was  seizable  by  virtue  of 
some  European  regulation;  the  English  proposed  to  allow  no 
ships  to  trade  with  their  colonies  except  English  vessels,  and 
the  American  ships  were  now  "foreign."  The  loss  of  their 
rights  on  the  Grand  Banks  in  particular  was  a  heavy  blow 
to  the  New  England  states,  the  more  severe  because  it  had 
apparently  not  been  foreseen;  it  robbed  them  at  a  stroke  of 
their  staple  for  export  and  hence  stopped  their  trade  at  its 
source.  The  Americans  had  fought  the  war  to  avoid  com 
mercial  ruin;  had  won  it,  and  found  themselves  doubly  and 
trebly  ruined,  worse  off  for  exchange  than  they  had  ever  been 
before. 

During  the  war,  the  armies  had  eaten  and  utilized  an  ap 
preciable  part  of  the  produce  of  the  country;  the  smuggling 
trade  had  been  briskly  plied  to  the  West  Indies  and  the  war 
prices  had  helped  to  lessen  the  distress.  But  the  astonishing 

i  Charming,  History  of  the  United  States,  III,  408-413. 


154  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

prosperity  of  the  country  during  the  war  and  the  good 
market  at  home  had  stimulated  production,  and  the  output  in 
the  last  years  of  the  war  and  immediately  after  was  far  too 
great  to  find  vent  through  the  smuggling  trade.  America 
was  producing  more  than  could  be  sold  at  a  profit,  and  pros 
perity  itself  caused  a  fall  of  values  and  of  prices  and  resulted 
in  a  widespread  distress  which  the  Americans  could  not  at 
all  comprehend.  The  old  system  of  exchange  with  Europe 
and  between  the  various  States  had  been  completely  dislo 
cated  by  the  war.  The  English  privateers  and  cruisers  had 
captured  many  merchantmen  and  had  thus  preceptibly  weak 
ened  the  American  merchant  marine.  Many  prominent  mer 
chants,  whose  ability  and  experience  had  made  the  complex 
round  of  voyages  a  profitable  and  adequate  outlet  for  Ameri 
can  produce,  had  been  exiled,  robbed  of  their  property  and 
position,  and  their  places  were  either  not  yet  filled  or  were 
occupied  by  nouveaux  riches  quite  incapable  of  rendering  the 
same  service. 

To  reestablish  the  old  routes  proved  to  be  unexpectedly  dif 
ficult.  The  very  general  failure  of  American  merchants, 
whether  from  inability  or  design,  to  meet  their  obligations  in 
England  contracted  before  the  war,  caused  a  not  unnatural 
reluctance  on  the  part  of  the  English  houses,  who  had  lost 
heavily,  to  reopen  old  accounts  or  accept  new,  and  deterred 
others  from  engaging  in  American  exchange.  From  the 
numerous  loyalists  and  exiles  in  London  came  tales  of  robbery 
and  confiscation  which  made  even  speculators  pause  before 
trusting  Americans.  Nor  was  the  English  ministry  willing 
to  concede  the  Americans  as  successful  revolutionists  the  very 
terms  which  the  latter  had  rejected  in  1778.  They  listened 
coldly  to  the  proud  colonists  who  had  disdainfully  tossed  one 
side,  as  if  of  no  value,  their  unlimited  privileges  under  the 
Navigation  Acts,  and  who  were  now  suing  for  some  very  lim 
ited  rights  in  the  West  Indies  and  off  the  Grand  Banks. 
The  English  deeply  resented  the  American  attitude  towards 
the  mother-country,  and  were  especially  indignant  over  the 
really  unjust  and  tyrannical  treatment  meted  out  to  the  loyal- 


THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD  155 

They  were  hardly  in  a  mood  to  grant  favors.  More 
over,  as  long  as  the  States  obstinately  refused  to  accede  to  the 
continued  requests  of  Congress  to  fulfil  the  terms  of  the 
Treaty  of  Peace,  and  as  long  as  the  Congress  was  only  too 
obviously  helpless  to  execute  what  it  had  solemnly  agreed  to 
perform,  what  reason  was  there  to  sign  new  treaties  or  even 
to  discuss  further  arrangements  which  would  still  depend  for 
validity  upon  the  honorable  intentions  of  the  Americans? 
Administrative  reform  in  America  was  an  indispensable  pre 
requisite  to  the  securing  of  such  terms  from  England  as  would 
relieve  the  economic  pressure  on  the  new  States. 

Administrative  reform  and  a  change  in  policy  were  also  in 
dispensable  if  trade  between  the  States  was  to  be  reestab 
lished.  Nothing  more  prejudicial  to  it  could  well  be  con 
ceived  than  the  legislation  passed  during  and  just  after  the 
war.  The  States  seemed  indeed  to  be  animated  by  the  deter 
mination  to  injure  each  other  as  much  as  possible  and  to  pre 
vent  interstate  commerce  by  every  means  in  their  power. 
Port  regulations,  embargoes,  tariffs  were  passed  by  State  after 
State,  discriminating  against  their  neighbors  and  frequently 
admitting  English  ships  and  English  goods  on  more  favorable 
terms  than  American.2  Inasmuch  as  few  of  the  States  were 
in  any  position  to  deal  directly  with  Europe  and  were  ordi 
narily  compelled  to  export  their  produce  by  a  series  of  ex 
changes  in  various  American  ports,  the  difficulties  sown  in  the 
way  of  commerce  by  these  contradictory  and  hostile  acts  can 
be  easily  imagined.  Most  merchants  soon  came  to  realize  that 
the  enforcement  to  the  letter  of  the  proposed  English  acts, 
whose  stringency  had  been  alleged  as  adequate  cause  for  re- 

2  "Massachusetts,  in  her  zeal  to  counteract  the  effect  of  the  English 
navigation  laws,  laid  enormous  duties  upon  British  goods  imported 
into  that  State;  but  the  other  States  did  not  adopt  a  similar  measure; 
and  the  loss  of  business  soon  obliged  that  State  to  repeal  or  suspend 
the  law.  Thus  when  Pennsylvania  laid  heavy  duties  on  British  goods, 
Delaware  and  New  Jersey  made  a  number  of  free  ports  to  encourage 
the  landing  of  goods  witlfin  the  limits  of  those  States;  and  the  duties 
in  Pennsylvania  served  no  purpose,  but  to  create  smuggling."  Jedidiah 
Morse,  The  American  Geography,  1789.  Quoted  in  Hart's  Contem* 
poraries,  III,  136-7. 


156  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

volt,  would  in  all  probability  have  injured  trade  far  less. 
Why  then,  merchants  began  to  ask,  had  the  war  been  fought  1 
Who  had  benefited  from  it? 

Nor  was  there  a  common  medium  of  exchange  in  America 
by  means  of  which  trade  was  facilitated  between  the  States. 
There  had  never  been  any  considerable  amount  of  coin  in  the 
country,  and  the  British  and  French  gold  paid  by  the  armies 
had  been  quickly  hoarded  or  had  flown  away  to  Europe. 
Paper  money  in  vast  amounts  had  been  issued  by  Congress, 
and  each  State  had  its  own  peculiar  variety.  The  bulk  of  it, 
in  Ramsay's  phrase,  "gently  fell  asleep  in  the  hands  of  its 
last  possessors."  Men  exchanged  the  actual  cloth  and  shoes 
and  grain  and  meat  as  in  the  Middle  Ages  before  a  money 
economy  existed.  However  adequate  this  might  be  for  local 
trade,  it  meant  the  complete  disappearance  of  the  budding 
commercial  structure  which  seemed  so  important  to  Ameri 
cans.  Yet,  without  agreement  among  the  States,  without 
authority  in  the  central  government,  how  was  a  uniform  cur 
rency  to  be  had?  Administrative  reform  in  America  was 
from  this  point  of  view  also  indispensable. 

Another  pregnant  cause  of  the  commercial  crisis  lay  in 
the  general  dislocation  of  business  by  the  attitude  of  the 
radicals  and  the  debtors  towards  property,  the  courts,  and 
the  collection  of  debts.  When  the  first  loyalists  had  left 
New  England  with  Howe  in  1776,  and  when  the  confiscation 
and  distribution  of  their  estates  had  whetted  the  appetite 
for  more,  a  pretty  general  indictment  of  "loyalists"  had 
taken  place  all  over  the  country,  and  large  amounts  of  prop 
erty  had  changed  hands.  The  outbreak  of  hostilities  had 
naturally  reacted  unfavorably  on  business;  the  sale  of  con 
fiscated  property,  paper  money,  and  the  like  had  produced 
a  vast  amount  of  speculation  and  gambling  in  land,  certifi 
cates,  and  loans  which  had  also  discouraged  legitimate  busi 
ness.8  Not  only  was  it  suspected  that  much  robbery  and  con- 

s  "Paper  currency  .  .  .  operated  in  the  most  powerful  and  malignant 
manner.  .  .  .  Every  sordid  passion  of  man  was  stimulated  to  the  most 
vigorous  exertion.  Wealth,  for  such  it  seemed  to  the  fancy,  was  ac- 


THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD  157 

fiscation  had  been  thinly  covered  with  the  allegation  of  loyal- 
ism,  that  men  had  been  exiled  and  brutally  treated  because 
they  were  rich  or  creditors  of  many  of  the  mob  that  dealt 
with  them,  but  the  passage  of  acts  by  the  legislatures  con 
doning  such  offenses,  the  practical  repudiation  of  the  pre- 
revolutionary  debts  owed  to  English  merchants,  the  evident 
unwillingness  of  the  radicals  to  agree  that  the  Revolutionary 
debt  was  a  valid  obligation,  the  evident  liking  for  paper  money 
and  the  imposition  of  heavy  penalties  for  its  refusal,  all 
caused  the  more  serious  to  fear  lest  this  occasional  misdoing 
should  be  organized  and  legalized  by  the  new  State  govern 
ments.  As  the  months  elapsed  and  became  years,  these  fears 
became  greater  instead  of  less,  and  were  amply  confirmed  by 
the  determination  in  Rhode  Island  to  provide  * '  cheap ' '  money 
and  plenty  of  it,  by  the  use  of  force  throughout  the  States 
to  prevent  the  courts  from  collecting  debts.  "We  are  fast 
verging,"  wrote  Washington,  "to  anarchy  and  confusion. " 
"I  am  uneasy  and  apprehensive,  more  so  than  during  the 
war,"  declared  Jay.  "If  faction  should  long  bear  down  law 
and  government,  tyranny  may  raise  its  head  and  the  more 
sober  part  of  the  people  may  even  think  of  a  king ! ' ' 

While  throughout  America  a  crisis  was  apparent  and  the 

quired  with  an  ease  and  rapidity  which  astonished  the  possessor. 
The  price  of  labor  and  of  every  vendible  commodity  rose  in  a  moment 
to  a  height  unexampled.  Avarice,  ambition  and  luxury  saw  their 
wishes  anticipated.  ...  It  soon  became  impossible  for  upright  men  to 
determine  whether  their  bargains  were  honest  or  oppressive.  .  .  .  The 
general  sense  of  right  and  obligation,  in  buying  and  selling,  was  gradu 
ally  lowered;  and  the  pride  of  making  good  bargains,  a  soft  name  for 
cheating,  gradually  extended.  Whatever  was  not  punishable  by  law 
multitudes  considered  as  rectitude.  .  .  .  The  existing  government  was 
peculiarly  unhappy.  All  regular  public  functionaries  lost  during  this 
period  either  the  whole  or  a  great  part  of  their  proper  efficacy.  In 
their  stead,  committees  of  inspection  and  correspondence  assumed  an 
extensive  control  over  both  the  public  and  private  affairs  of  their  coun 
try.  The  powers  of  these  bodies  were  undefined,  and  therefore  soon 
became  merely  discretionary.  Yet  they  were  the  tribunals  by  which 
almost  every  cause  was  decided.  In  most  instances  they  were  composed 
of  men,  unlearned  in  law  and  unskilled  in  public  business.  .  .  .  Very 
many  and  very  great  evils  were  actually  produced  by  this  government." 
Dwight,  Travels  in  New  England  and  New  York,  IV,  369-371. 


158  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

friends  of  decency  and  order  feared  for  the  worst,  nowhere 
did  the  radicals  succeed  as  well  as  in  Massachusetts,  and  in 
no  State  would  their  success  have  excited  more  alarm  either 
among  its  own  people  or  in  other  States.  Massachusetts  had 
so  long  been  the  largest  Northern  State;  its  wealth  and  con 
servatism,  its  virtue  and  honesty,  had  already  become  so  com 
monly  accepted  as  unalterable,  that  the  outbreak  of  Shays 's 
Rebellion  in  the  western  part  of  the  State  in  the  fall  of  1786 
1  caused  the  people  of  less  orderly  and  stable  States  to  believe 
that  the  deluge  was  near.  The  lawyers  had  for  some  time 
been  assailed  in  Massachusetts  as  "pickpockets"  and  "blood 
suckers"  because  they  were  aiding  creditors  to  recover  the 
debts  due  them ;  but  these  ebullitions  of  temper  became  serious 
when  conventions  met  in  various  towns,  voted  lawyers  a  griev 
ance,  and  demanded  their  abolition.  At  Hatfield,  a  conven 
tion  voted  to  abolish  the  court  of  common  pleas,  which  meant 
the  abolition  of  the  machinery  for  the  collection  of  debts  and 
for  the  recovery  of  land.  It  also  declared  in  favor  of  an  im 
mediate  issue  of  paper  money  and  against  the  granting  of  any 
money  to  Congress.  Mobs  prevented  the  sitting  of  the  lower 
courts  in  several  counties,  and  Shays  with  nearly  six  hundred 
armed  men  prevented  the  session  of  the  Supreme  Court  at 
Springfield.  For  some  weeks,  he  and  his  disorderly  crew 
terrorized  Massachusetts  but  were  finally  scattered  by  militia 
from  Boston.  ' '  Our  distress  was  so  great, ' '  said  Smith,  speak 
ing  of  this  time  in  the  Massachusetts  Convention  of  1788, 
"that  we  should  have  been  glad  to  snatch  at  anything  that 
looked  like  a  government. ' '  *  Such  acts  had  occurred  before 
and  during  the  Revolution,  the  North  Carolina  Regulators  in 
1770  being  an  especially  noteworthy  case,  but  in  1786  the 
crisis  seemed  to  have  come.  Most  men  concluded  that  the 
alternative  lay  between  a  strong  central  government  and 
anarchy. 

It  was  only  too  patent  that  the  States  had  been  unable  to 
cope   with   the   difficulties   and   would  never  be   able   satis 
factorily  to  solve  them,  because  the  problems  were  not  local 
*  Elliott,  Delates,  II,  103. 


THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD  159 

but  general,  and  required  for  their  solution  unified 
action  based  upon  a  unanimity  of  opinion.  Thirteen  States 
could  not  negotiate  for  fishing  rights  off  Newfoundland  or 
privileges  in  the  West  Indies,  though  both  were  directly  or 
indirectly  necessary  for  the  welfare  of  all.  From  bitter  ex 
perience  it  was  clear  that  the  States  could  not  be  induced 
individually  to  vote  money  to  pay  the  army  and  to  meet  the 
obligations  of  the  Confederation.  The  thirteen  might 
conceivably  agree  upon  uniform  tariff  regulations  and  upon  a 
uniform  currency,  but  surely  a  negotiation  conducted  through 
"  ambassadors "  in  Congress  was  the  most  roundabout  and 
cumbrous  method  of  reaching  such  an  agreement.  Had  the 
States  not  been  so  violently  at  odds  with  each  other,  some 
thing  might  have  been  done.  Had  there  been  any  alignment 
of  States  by  which  the  large  and  the  small  could  have  com 
bined  or  the  States  with  western  lands  have  united  against 
those  without,  something  might  have  been  achieved  through 
sectional  governments.  But  the  accident  of  geography  and 
of  settlement  had  made  us,  as  Gerry  happily  said,  "  neither 
the  same  nation  nor  different  nations. ' ' 6  The  large  States 
were  not  contiguous  and  were  also  at  odds  over  the  western 
lands;  the  small  States  were  hopelessly  separated  from  each 
other  by  the  territory  of  the  large  States,  were  neither  all 
with  or  without  western  lands  and  other  obvious  local  inter 
ests.  In  all,  the  line  of  debtor  and  creditor,  of  patriot  and 
loyalist,  was  sharp,  and  men  were  even  beginning  to  complain 
of  an  opposition  of  interests  between  the  Northern  and  the 
Southern  States.  The  vital  difficulty  was  that  no  two  of  these 
lines  coincided;  that  the  country  was  not  divided  geographic 
ally  into  sections,  vertically  into  creeds,  parties,  or  interests, 
horizontally  into  classes.  Each  tiny  group  in  every  State 
hoped  to  secure  timely  assistance  from  its  sympathizers  in 
other  States.  There  was  no  basis  on  which  the  jarring  inter 
ests  could  divide:  they  must  perforce  unite  and  somehow 
work  out  together  a  livable  compromise. 

Nor  should  we  forget  the  powerful  incentive  to  strong  cen- 

e  Hunt's  Madison's  Notes,  I,  302. 


160  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

tral  government  furnished  by  the  growing  belief  among  the 
conservative,  orderly,  propertied  classes  that  they  were  in 
the  numerical  minority  in  every  State,  and  could  escape  de 
struction  only  by  a  union  of  their  forces  and  by  the  assistance 
which  a  strong  central  government  could  lend  any  individual 
State-government  which  should  be  too  hard  pressed.  Private 
interests  seemed  likely  to  be  more  injured  by  the  continued 
complete  sovereignty  of  the  States  than  they  could  possibly 
be  by  even  sweeping  and  dictatorial  authority  in  the  hands 
of  a  central  government.  If  only  a  government  could  be  es 
tablished  whose  policy  would  be  the  payment  of  the  debt  and 
of  the  army,  the  fulfilment  of  the  promises  in  the  Treaty  of 
Peace,  and  adequate  provision  for  foreign  trade,  it  could 
rally  to  it  the  creditors  and  moneyed  men  throughout 
America. 

It  was,  however,  clear  beyond  a  shadow  of  doubt  that  the 
existing  Congress  did  not  and  could  not,  under  any  such  docu 
ment  as  the  Articles  of  Confederation,  occupy  any  such  posi 
tion  or  furnish  any  such  protection.  The  Congress  in  fact 
merely  multiplied  the  difficulties  and  accentuated  the  differ 
ences  between  the  States,  because  it  could  only  reflect  the  divi 
sions  of  the  States  themselves.  To  most  of  the  leaders,  it  was 
clear  that  States'  sovereignty  and  its  corollary,  a  weak  central 
government,  was  the  root  of  the  trouble  and  made  it  in 
soluble.  "The  great  and  radical  vice  in  the  construction  of 
the  existing  Confederation, "  declared  Hamilton,  "is  the  prin 
ciple  of  Legislation  for  States  or  Governments  in  their  Cor 
porate  or  Collective  capacities  and  as  contradistinguished 
from  the  individuals  of  which  they  consist.  "6  The  very  at 
tempt  to  discuss  the  general  issues  in  thirteen  different  places 
and  to  record  the  conclusion  in  a  fourteenth  was  in  itself  a 
problem  of  the  first  magnitude.  "The  world  must  see  and 
feel,"  wrote  Washington  in  1785,  "that  the  Union  or  the 
States  individually  are  sovereign  as  best  suits  their  purposes ; 
in  a  word,  they  are  one  to-day  and  thirteen  to-morrow. ' ' 7 

e  The  Federalist,  XV. 

7  Marshall,  Life  of  Washington,  II,  97. 


THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD  161 

"The  confederation  appears  to  me  to  be  little  more  than  a 
shadow  without  the  substance."8  "If  you  tell  the  legisla 
tures  they  have  violated  the  treaty  of  peace  and  invaded  the 
prerogatives  of  the  confederacy,  they  will  laugh  in  your 
face."  It  was  facetiously  said  that  the  Americans  had  out 
done  the  Trinity  by  making  the  thirteen  one  while  leaving  the 
one  thirteen. 

The  Confederation,  in  fact,  was  a  league  of  friendship 
and  amity  rather  than  a  government.  The  central  body  was 
really  a  multiple  executive  unable  to  act  of  itself,  and  com 
pelled  to  wait  instructions  from  its  numerous  masters  before 
it  could  act  at  all.  So  long  as  the  vote  was  taken  by  States, 
and  State  delegations  disagreed  or  were  absent,  there  were 
always  States  who  were  able  to  claim  that  they  had  not  con 
sented  to  this  or  that  resolution  and  were  therefore  not  bound 
by  it.  Although  the  lack  of  authority  over  commerce  and  of 
the  power  of  direct  taxation  were  almost  insuperable  obsta 
cles  in  the  way  of  efficient  administration,  the  chief  trouble 
— if  any  one  thing  among  so  many  could  be  claimed  to  be 
the  stumbling  block  of  offense — was  the  inability  of  the  Con 
federation  to  compel  the  States  to  observe  any  "law"  upon 
any  subject,  however  indifferent  or  minute.  "They  (the 
Congress)  may  make  war,"  wrote  Jay,  "but  are  not  empow 
ered  to  raise  men  or  money  to  carry  it  on.  They  may  make 
peace,  but  without  power  to  see  the  terms  of  it  observed. 
They  may  form  alliances,  but  without  ability  to  comply  with 
the  stipulations  on  their  part.  They  may  enter  into  treaties 
of  commerce,  but  without  power  to  enforce  them  at  home  or 
abroad.  They  may  borrow  money  but  without  having  the 
means  of  repayment.  They  may  partly  regulate  commerce, 
but  without  authority  to  enforce  their  ordinances.  They  may 
appoint  ministers  and  other  officers  of  trust,  but  without 
power  to  try  or  punish  them  for  misdemeanors.  They  may 
resolve,  but  cannot  execute,  either  with  despatch  or  with  se 
crecy.  In  short,  they  may  consult,  and  deliberate,  and  rec- 

s  Writings  of  Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  XT,  1. 


162  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

ommend,  and  make  requisitions,  and  they  who  please  may 
regard  them."  9 

Two  things,  each  in  itself  insignificant,  indicate  how  help 
less  and  powerless  was  this  Confederation.  During  the  last 
two  or  three  years  of  its  life,  there  was  not  money  enough 
in  the  treasury  to  provide  the  secretary  with  the  pens,  ink, 
and  paper  needed  to  keep  a  record  of  its  deliberations! 
Since  the  close  of  the  war,  the  army,  still  unpaid,  had  lin 
gered  in  the  neighborhood  of  Philadelphia,  and  one  day  a 
small  band  of  about  eighty  men  escaped  from  their  officers 
and  marched  on  Philadelphia  to  demand  their  pay  from  Con 
gress.  Into  the  city  they  marched  and  to  Liberty  Hall, 
where,  after  some  shouting  and  disorder,  they  threw  stones 
through  the  windows.  Not  a  hand  was  raised  to  protect  the 
central  government,  and  the  members  of  Congress  ignomini- 
ously  crawled  out  of  the  windows  or  escaped  through  the  back 
door  and  fled  across  the  river  to  Trenton.  That  was  indeed 
a  spectacle  which  confirmed  the  worst  fears  of  Americans 
and  the  predictions  of  Europeans.  "To  be  more  exposed  in 
the  eyes  of  the  world,"  wrote  Washington,  "and  more  con 
temptible  than  we  already  are,  is  hardly  possible. ' ' 10 

The  remedy,  as  the  leaders  saw,  lay  in  the  institution  of 
a  central  government  possessed  of  powers  for  direct  taxation 
and  the  regulation  of  commerce  and  with  a  sanction  of  force 
behind  it  of  sufficient  weight  to  insure  obedience  to  its  or 
ders.  Men  like  Peletiah  Webster  propounded  in  pamphlets 
which  attracted  wide  attention  various  forms  which  such  a 
solution  might  take.  From  the  growth  of  the  last  century 
and,  indeed,  of  the  last  generation,  had  emerged  compelling 
facts  arguing  the  expediency  and  profitableness  of  union. 
Rapid  emigration,  westward  movement,  the  general  prosperity, 
had  certainly  quadrupled  the  number  of  people  in  America 
in  1700,  and  had  easily  doubled  the  population  since  1760. 
From  this  growth  inevitably  resulted  a  degree  of  propin 
quity  which  had  never  before  existed.  When  the  colonies  were 

9  Ford,  Pamphlets  on  the  Constitution,  67. 

10  Writings  of  Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  XI,  77. 


THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD  163 

merely  little  groups  of  people  scattered  along  a  thousand 
miles  of  sea-coast,  separated  by  long  miles  of  wilderness  de 
void  of  roads,  and  dependent  on  tedious  sea  voyages  for  inter 
communication,  it  was  easy  for  them  to  maintain  their  sov 
ereign  independence  of  each  other;  there  were  few  interests 
or  antagonisms  in  which  they  affected  each  other's  welfare 
vitally.  Nature  had  separated  them  and  made  them  thirteen 
and  not  one.  But  in  1783  the  States  impinged  upon  each 
other,  at  least  along  the  coast,  and  forced  upon  each  other 
the  consideration  of  this  matter  and  the  decision  of  that. 
The  lack  of  natural  barriers  between  them,  of  geographical 
divisions  of  the  Atlantic  coast,  the  fact  that  they  all  occu 
pied  contiguous  sections  of  the  same  watershed,  drained  by 
parallel  rivers,  gave  them,  whether  they  would  or  no,  cer 
tain  common  problems  which  had  to  be  settled  either  by  dis 
cussion  or  by  force.  Partly  because  of  the  accident  of  set 
tlement,  partly  because  of  the  ignorance  of  geography  and  of 
the  sort  of  entity  desirable  for  a  single  State,  the  colonial 
charters  had  accentuated  these  facts  by  making  the  important 
rivers  the  boundaries  between  the  States.  New  Hampshire 
and  Massachusetts  were  separated  by  the  Merrimac ;  New  York 
and  New  Jersey  by  the  Hudson ;  Pennsylvania,  Delaware,  and 
New  Jersey  by  the  Delaware ;  Virginia  and  Maryland  by  the 
Potomac;  South  Carolina  and  Georgia  by  the  Savannah.  By 
law  and  custom,  they  owned  together  the  only  common  roads 
into  the  interior  before  the  days  of  railroads,  and  normally 
therefore  came  into  contact  with  each  other  the  moment  the 
area  of  settlement  attained  any  dimensions  at  all.  Even 
where  there  were  no  disputes  as  to  what  the  boundary  was, 
the  common  use  of  the  rivers  made  necessary  some  sort  of  a 
general  consensus  of  opinion  as  to  the  rights  of  each  State 
in  the  natural  highways. 

On  the  whole,  too,  by  reason  of  the  common  economic  de 
pendence  of  the  whole  Atlantic  coast  upon  Europe  for  manu 
factured  articles  and  of  the  total  lack  of  a  medium  of  ex 
change  with  Europe,  the  interests  of  all  the  States  were  sure 
to  be  furthered  or  injured  together  by  the  sort  of  relation- 


164  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

ship  now  to  be  established  with  foreign  nations.  The  fact 
that  economic  conditions  forced  all  the  States  to  trade  with 
each  other  and  with  Europe  via  the  West  Indies  gave  them 
the  most  powerful  of  possible  common  ties,  a  strong  self-in 
terest  which  could  best  be  preserved  or  extended  by  a  gen 
eral  agreement  and  common  action.  If  the  New  Englanders 
could  not  fish  off  the  Grand  Banks,  how  could  they  buy  Penn 
sylvania  flour  or  Virginia  tobacco?  Common  action,  a  gen 
eral  agreement  as  to  rights  and  policies  were  clearly  the  best 
methods  of  furthering  and  protecting  the  economic  interests  of 
individuals  and  of  the  several  States. 

Moreover,  the  jealousies  of  the  various  States  of  each  other, 
the  fact  that  nearly  all  of  them  were  at  loggerheads  with 
more  than  one  of  their  neighbors,  made  them  equally  un 
willing  to  leave  the  settlement  of  the  more  obvious  problems 
to  the  States  most  nearly  concerned.  For  all,  the  free  navi 
gation  of  the  rivers  without  militating  and  conflicting  regula 
tions  and  preferential  duties  was  most  advantageous,  and 
seemed  wholly  impossible  unless  the  common  highways  could 
be  handed  over  to  a  central  government  which  might  arbitrate 
and  represent  equally  the  claims  and  interests  of  all. 

But  the  western  territory  between  the  Alleghanies  and  the 
Mississippi,  ceded  by  England  in  the  Treaty  of  Peace,  pre 
sented  the  greatest  difficulty.  It  was  quite  clear  before  the 
ink  on  the  treaty  was  dry  that  the  separate  States  would  not 
be  able  to  settle  this  question  by  agreements  with  each  other. 
Before  the  war,  settlers  from  Virginia  and  North  Carolina 
had  begun  pushing  over  the  mountains,  and,  after  the  war 
had  begun,  Patrick  Henry,  as  Governor  of  Virginia,  had  di 
rected  the  " conquest"  of  the  land  north  of  the  Ohio  by  a 
Virginia  "army"  under  Clark.  One  of  the  old  charters  was 
then  exhumed  whose  plausible  interpretation  vested  in  Vir 
ginia  the  title  to  the  whole  interior  of  the  Continent  north 
of  36°  30'.  Whereupon,  New  York  produced  a  claim  to  the 
same  extensive  district  on  the  ground  that  it  was  the  property 
of  the  Iroquois  tribes,  and  was  therefore  included  in  the 
grants  to  the  Duke  of  York  by  Charles  II.  From  Connecticut 


THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD  165 

and  Massachusetts  came  loud  cries  of  protest  and  claims  to 
the  whole  northern  part  of  the  Missisippi  Valley  based  upon 
their  own  charters.  That  the  acceptance  of  any  one  claim 
excluded  the  other  three  was  undoubted.  If  their  respective 
claims  were  valid  at  all,  they  were  mutually  exclusive. 

The  other  nine  States,  however,  resisted  vehemently  any 
attempt  at  compromise  which  should  divide  the  property  be 
tween  the  four.  The  solid  cause  of  their  opposition  came 
from  the  fact  that  some  of  them  had  already  smaller  terri 
tories  than  these  four  States  and  that  the  existence  of  all  the 
remainder  would  be  vitally  endangered  by  such  an  extension 
of  the  territory  of  a  few.  Rhode  Island  and  Maryland  feared 
conquest  or  absorption.  Had  not  Plymouth  and  New  Haven 
already  been  swallowed  by  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut? 
New  Jersey  declared  herself  a  cask  tapped  at  both  ends  by 
New  York  and  Pennsylvania  and  therefore  certain  to  be  dry. 
Nor  were  such  fears  slow  to  produce  arguments  from  history, 
law,  and  expediency.  All  the  charters  on  which  these  claims 
were  founded  had  long  since  been  specifically  revoked;  the 
Proclamation  Line  of  1763  had  definitely  restricted  the 
thirteen  coast  colonies  to  the  eastern  slope  of  the  mountains; 
if  the  acts  of  the  English  Crown  were  to  decide  the  question, 
the  four  claims  were  undoubtedly  all  bad.  Furthermore,  had 
not  the  Treaty  of  Peace  ceded  the  land  in  question  to  the 
thirteen  States  in  common?  Had  anything  been  said  about 
the  revival  of  charters  or  the  extension  of  existing  boundaries  ? 

So  evident  was  it  that  no  division  of  the  territory  could  be 
devised  satisfactory  to  the  four  principals,  and  that  no  reten 
tion  of  it  by  any  of  them  on  any  terms  would  be  counte 
nanced  by  the  rest  of  the  States,  that  the  claims  of  the  four 
were  finally  ceded  to  the  shadowy  central  government.  Thus 
the  territory  between  the  mountains  and  the  Mississippi  be 
came  common  property  and  its  existence  aided  immensely  the 
cause  of  union  and  of  strong  government.  From  one  source 
and  another  had  come  tales  of  the  wonderful  fertility  of  the 
land,  of  the  incalculable  value  of  its  trading  privileges,  while 
a  good  many  of  the  legends  so  influential  in  encouraging  the 


166  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

early  explorers  showed  a  surprising  vitality  and  persistence. 
The  new  land  was  valuable,  and  every  State  began  to  take 
thought  about  the  proper  method  of  ensuring  the  safety  of 
its  interests  in  the  common  property. 

Finally,  union  was  as  eminently  possible  as  it  was  desirable. 
Throughout  America  the  population  was  substantially  homo 
geneous.  The  Teutonic  stock  and  the  Protestant  religion  easily 
predominated;  the  English  common  law  was  universally  ac 
cepted;  State  and  local  government  were  essentially  alike  in 
form  and  in  operation.  There  were  no  fundamental  geo 
graphical,  economic,  racial,  religious,  or  institutional  obstacles 
to  be  overcome.  The  difficulties  were  superficial,  not  funda 
mental,  matters  of  form  and  detail,  not  matters  of  substance. 
Indeed,  adequate  administrative  regulations  and  corporate 
honesty  alone  were  needed  to  remedy  a  situation  which  seemed 
to  superficial  observers  desperate.  From  the  pens  of  keener 
men  we  have  words  which  indicate  that  the  situation  was  as 
thoroughly  understood  in  Europe  as  in  America.  "The  re 
flections  which  I  have  just  had  the  honor  of  submitting  to 
you,'7  wrote  a  European  envoy,  " scarcely  conform  to  the 
vague  and  exaggerated  reports  with  which  almost  all  the  Eu 
ropean  and  American  publications  are  flooded  in  regard  to  the 
situation  of  the  United  States.  They  confound  the  uncer 
tainty  of  a  people  which  has  not  yet  chosen  its  form  of  stable 
and  permanent  government  with  disorder  and  internal  an 
archy,  but  this  uncertainty  is  only  felt  abroad  or  in  their 
political  discussions  without  affecting  in  any  way  the  tranquil 
lity  and  industry  of  the  citizens.  If  one  studies  ever  so  little 
the  general  prosperity,  individual  comfort,  the  well-nigh  in 
conceivable  growth  of  all  parts  of  the  republic,  one  is  tempted 
to  believe  that  this  one  has  taken  the  longest  strides  towards 
opulence  and  formidable  power. " 

The  convention  which  drew  up  the  Constitution  grew  out  of 
the  attempts  of  Maryland  and  Virginia  to  settle  their  private 
disputes  by  conference  and  compromise.  After  a  thorough  dis 
cussion  of  the  situation,  the  delegates  of  both  States  agreed 
that  the  adequate  solution  of  their  peculiar  quarrels  involved 


THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD  167 

the  decision  of  too  many  other  interstate  quarrels  to  admit 
of  the  attainment  of  a  satisfactory  conclusion  by  themselves 
alone.  Accordingly,  the  several  States  were  invited  to  send 
representatives  to  Annapolis  to  discuss  the  various  issues  with 
a  view  to  permanent  settlement.  Five  States  responded,  whose 
delegates  abandoned  any  attempt  at  agreement  and  coun 
seled  the  summoning  of  a  general  convention  at  Philadel 
phia  to  amend  the  Articles  of  Confederation.  The  sugges 
tion  was  at  once  adopted  by  a  majority  of  the  States  and 
the  others  soon  named  delegates.  The  Federal  Convention 
which  met  in  1787,  therefore,  like  most  other  important 
actions  taken  during  the  period,  was  the  result  of  separate 
State  action  and  not  of  an  act  of  the  central  government. 
The  claim  of  the  Southern  leaders  in  later  days  that  the 
States,  and  not  the  nation,  made  the  Constitution  was  thus 
far  historically  true. 


XIII 
THE  CONSTITUTION 

THE  wisdom  of  the  members  of  the  Constitutional  Conven 
tion,  which  sat  at  Philadelphia  from  May  to  September  of 
1787,  was  in  no  respect  more  conspicuous  than  in  their  deter 
mination  to  debate  thoroughly  and  agree  upon  the  basic 
principles  of  constitutional  law  upon  which  the  government 
they  suggested  must  be  founded.  They  recognized,  further 
more,  the  truth  of  Montesquieu's  contention  that  successful 
governments  were  founded  upon  and  must  be  consonant 
with  the  economic  and  social  conditions  of  the  time  and 
could  not  be  based  merely  upon  theory  or  precedent. 
American  political  democracy  was  consciously  based  upon 
the  economic  and  social  equality  which  the  members  of  the 
Constitutional  Convention  saw  existed  in  this  country.  While 
they  examined  with  great  care  every  form  of  government 
the  world  had  known  and  gave  particular  attention  to  the 
Greek,  Roman,  and  Dutch  Republics,  they  concluded  that 
the  circumstances  in  America  in  1787  were  without  prece 
dent  and  that  the  results  of  previous  attempts  at  democracy 
were  therefore  without  value.  The  English  government  many 
of  them  admired,  and  the  subtlety  of  its  working  they  all 
understood;  but  Hamilton  stood  practically  alone  in  claim 
ing  that  any  of  its  elements  could  be  profitably  copied  in 
America.1  The  members  of  the  Convention,  in  fact,  fell  back 
upon  colonial  experience  and  the  experiments  of  the  States 
in  forming  their  constitutions  during  the  Revolution  for 
most  of  the  detailed  provisions  of  the  Constitution.  Presi- 

i  For  Hamilton's  views,  see  Hunt's  Madison's  Notes,  I,  158;  for  the 
contrary  opinions  of  Wilson,  Madison,  Pinckney,  and  others  see  Ibid., 
I,  50,  51,  98,  225,  etc. 

168 


THE  CONSTITUTION  169 

dent,  Senate,  and  House,  the  separation  of  powers,  the  pre 
dominance  of  the  legislature,  the  weakness  of  the  executive, 
they  tried  to  copy  from  American  experience.  But  these 
details,  the  purely  formal  elements  of  the  new  government, 
were  not  its  vital  forces. 

First  and  foremost  in  importance  stands  the  fact  that 
the  Constitution  founded  a  democracy  in  which  all  men  should 
be  equal  before  the  law  and  in  which  the  people  should  be 
sovereign.  This  was  indeed  merely  the  legal  recognition 
of  an  existing  fact.  In  wealth,  in  birth,  in  education,  in 
privilege,  men  wrere  already  on  the  same  footing  in  every 
colony :  the  affirmations  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
the  vital  words  of  the  Preamble  of  the  Consitution  were, 
as  their  form  indicated,  simply  statements  of  existing  facts. 
"Equality  is  as  I  contend  the  leading  feature  of  the  U. 
States. "  "A  system  must  be  suited  to  the  habits  and  genius 
of  the  People  it  is  to  govern,  and  must  grow  out  of  them/' 
declared  Pinckney.  "After  all  there  is  one,  but  one  great 
and  equal  body  of  Citizens  composing  the  inhabitants  of  this 
Country  among  whom  there  are  no  distinctions  of  rank,  and 
very  few  or  none  of  fortune.  For  a  people  thus  circum 
stanced  are  we  then  to  form  a  Government.  .  .  .  These  are 
I  believe  as  active,  intelligent,  and  susceptible  of  good  Govern 
ment  as  any  people  in  the  world. ' ' 2 

With  this  equality  of  condition,  the  travelers,  already 
numerous,  had  been  charmed.  A  French  traveler,  De 
Segur,  expressed  his  surprise  at  the  absence  of  the  extremes 
of  luxury  and  poverty  to  which  he  was  accustomed  in  Europe. 
"A\l  the  Americans  whom  we  met  wore  clothes  of  good 
material.  Their  free,  frank,  and  familiar  address,  equally 
removed  from  uncouth  discourtesy  and  from  artificial  polite 
ness,  betokened  men  who  were  proud  of  their  own  rights 
and  respected  those  of  others. "  To  Lafayette 's  astonishment, 
the  inn-keeper  and  his  wife  usually  sat  down  with  him  at 
table,  and  conversed  with  him  intelligently  on  a  great  variety 
of  subjects.  He  saw  no  magnificent  mansions,  with  powdered 

2  Hunt'*  Madison'*  Xotes,  I,  225;  229-231. 


170  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

lackeys  at  the  door,  rode  in  no  splendid  coaches,  drawn  by 
prancing  steeds  (though  there  were  fine  equipages  in  the 
colonies),  but  found  everywhere  houses  of  wood  or  brick, 
simply  made,  gleaming  with  clean  white  paint,  and  furnished 
inside  with  a  frugal  elegance  and  an  excellent  taste  which 
even  the  fastidious  Frenchman  was  compelled  to  confess  were 
admirable.  The  Comte  de  Segur  was  enthusiastic  over  the 
scenery  and  equally  loud  in  his  praise  of  the  settled  portions 
of  the  country.  "Sometimes  I  was  admiring  a  lovely  valley, 
carefully  tilled,  with  the  meadows  full  of  cattle;  the  houses 
clean,  elegant,  painted  in  bright  colors,  and  standing  in  little 
gardens  behind  pretty  fences.  Abundance,  comfort,  and  ur 
banity  everywhere. "  Everywhere  he  found  cleanliness, 
everywhere  he  found  a  plenty  of  the  hearty  wholesome  fare 
which  in  Europe  was  then  unknown  to  the  lower  classes.  In 
Prance,  many  of  the  peasants  of  1787  were  eating  bread 
made  out  of  chestnuts  and  acorns  ground  fine  and  mixed 
with  bran.  Even  the  middle  class  was  glad  to  get  rye  bread, 
while  fresh  meat  was  a  luxury  known  only  to  the  rich.  But 
in  America,  the  farmer,  the  laborer,  and  the  carpenter,  as 
well  as  the  merchant  and  the  great  planter,  sat  down  daily 
to  a  dinner  of  fresh  meat  and  wheat  bread,  and  not  in 
frequently,  as  Howe  tells  us  in  his  diary,3  such  luxuries  as 
green  peas  or  strawberries  and  cream,  which  had  already 
become  characteristic  American  dishes. 

Next  to  the  equality  of  conditions,  the  simplicity,  honesty, 
and  genuineness  of  life  seem  to  have  caused  most  remark. 
"Simplicity  of  manners,"  declared  Lafayette,  "the  desire  to 
oblige,  and  a  mild  and  quiet  equality  are  the  rule  everywhere. ' ' 
"The  inhabitants,  each  and  all/'  wrote  the  Comte  de  Segur, 
"exhibited  the  unassuming  and  quiet  pride  of  men  who  had 
no  master,  who  see  nothing  above  them  except  the  law,  and 
who  are  free  from  the  vanity,  the  servility,  and  the  preju 
dices  of  our  European  societies."  Life  was  free;  the  neces 
sities  of  life  being  easily  secured,  all  were  equal  and  treated 

s The  Diary  of  John  Rowe  (Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Pro 
ceedings,  Second  Series,  X,  147. 


THE  CONSTITUTION  171 

each  other  like  brothers.  Education  was  widespread:  most 
of  the  people  could  read,  and  many  could  write  an  excellent 
hand.  The  old  dames'  schools  had  done  well  in  New  Eng 
land  and  had  spread  education,  albeit  neither  very  deeply 
nor  very  accurately,  over  the  whole  community.  In  the 
Middle  States,  the  ability  to  read  and  write  was  common 
and  in  the  South  universal  among  the  planters.  Further 
more,  there  is  nothing  more  interesting  to  note  in  the  mental 
attitude  of  colonial  Americans  than  the  belief,  firmly  planted 
in  the  mind  of  each  boy,  that  with  work  and  diligence  he 
could  become  anything  he  wanted  to  be.  Witness  the  youth 
ful  Franklin.  He  desired  to  become  an  author.  No  sooner 
said  than  done :  he  took  Addison  as  a  model ;  he  set  to  work 
rewriting  the  Spectator;  and  soon  began  to  send  contributions 
to  his  brother's  newspaper,  whose  excellence  attracted  at 
tention.  Falling  out  with  his  brother,  he  did  not  set  out 
for  some  place  ten  miles  distant,  but  for  Philadelphia,  half 
across  the  country;  and,  becoming  dissatisfied  with  prospects 
there,  sailed  for  England.  He  had  no  money;  he  had  no 
guardian  but  his  own  sublime  self-confidence;  but  he  neither 
hesitated  nor  doubted.  Thirty  years  later  he  retired  from 
active  business,  a  wealthy  man  for  life. 

This  American,  at  once  so  frugal  and  so  honest,  was  vehe 
mently  interested  in  politics.  Even  the  servants  read  the  news 
papers,  remarked  one  observer.  Yes,  and  understood  them 
too,  added  another.  All  classes  of  the  community  talked 
politics  in  season  and  out  of  season.  Nor  were  they  inter 
ested  merely  in  personalities  about  the  governor  or  gossip 
about  the  love  affairs  of  his  daughter.  A  brief  perusal  of 
the  Centinel  or  the  Gazette  will  show  the  modern  reader 
that  our  ancestors  read  with  avidity  essays,  constitutional 
arguments,  histories  of  trade,  summaries  of  English  and  colo 
nial  legislation.  This  habit  of  reading  and  the  subsequent 
discussion  of  tangled  questions  was  of  great  value  in  train 
ing  the  Americans  for  the  great  experiment  of  democratic 
government  on  which  they  were  embarking. 

But  in  this  life  and  in  their  politics  they  were  self-centered. 


172  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

A  Massachusetts  man  lived  for  Massachusetts,  not  for  Eng 
land  nor  for  Virginia.  He  was  patriotic  but  not  to  any 
united  organization  called  either  the  British  Empire  or  the 
United  Colonies.  His  ignorance  of  affairs  in  Europe  and 
even  in  other  colonies  was  colossal.  The  Comte  de  Segur  ex 
changed  opinions  with  the  keeper  of  the  inn  where  he  put 
up  for  the  night,  who  called  himself  a  Colonel,  and  discoursed 
at  great  length  on  campaigns  and  farming.  De  Segur,  stating 
in  turn  that  his  father  was  a  general  and  a  minister  of  State, 
was  astounded  to  perceive  that  the  Colonel  did  not  at  all 
realize  what  the  rank  of  General  and  office  of  Minister  of 
State  implied  in  France.  Outside  of  trade,  the  American 
cared  only  for  politics;  outside  of  the  local  politics  of  his 
own  community,  he  understood  little,  though  ready  to  dis 
cuss  anything  with  anybody. 

In  the  hands  of  such  a  people,  the  makers  of  the  Consti 
tution  placed  the  sovereignty,  the  right  to  decide  in  the  last 
resort  all  issues  of  importance.  After  long  and  heated  dis 
cussion,  no  Bill  of  Rights  was  included  and  no  direct  state 
ment  made  that  the  supreme  power  was  vested  in  the  people 
themselves.  The  argument  which  carried  the  day  was  that 
of  James  Wilson,  of  Pennsylvania,  to  whose  keen  logical 
mind  and  deep  understanding  of  the  situation  we  owe  much 
of  the  shape  of  the  great  document.  ' '  The  preamble  to  ~the 
proposed  Constitution,"  said  he,  "  'We,  the  people  of  the 
United  States,  do  establish,'  contains  the  essence  of  all  the 
Bills  of  Rights  that  have  been  or  can  be  devised."  The 
people  alone  made  it;  the  people  alone  might  change  it;  the 
people  in  making  it  surrendered  no  jot  or  tittle  of  their 
power ;  they  remained  superior  to  the  Constitution.  Further 
more,  by  writing  "the  People  of  the  United  States"  and  not 
"the  peoples  of  the  United  States,"  the  new  government  was 
necessarily  made  a  government  where  a  body  of  individuals 
and  not  a  union  of  States  was  sovereign.  "A  Union  of  the 
States,"  said  King,  "is  a  Union  of  the  men  composing  them 
from  whence  a  national  character  results  to  the  whole. ' '  * 

*  Hunt's    Madison's    Notes,    I,    186.     The    preceding    part    of    King's 


THE  CONSTITUTION  173 

The  new  government  would  have  jurisdiction  over  every  man 
in  America,  the  lack  of  which  had  been,  to  the  thinking  of 
the  Convention,  the  old  Confederation's  greatest  defect. 
There  was,  too,  in  the  minds  of  the  leaders  no  doubt  that 
the  sovereignty  of  the  States  which  had  caused  during  the 
Revolution  and  Critical  period  so  much  suffering  to  every  one 
would  be  a  thing  of  the  past.  The  wholesale  repudiation  of 
debts,  the  coining  of  money,  making  of  tariffs  to  exclude 
trade  from  the  next  State,  raising  of  armies,  building  of 
navies  and  more,  were  explicitly  forbidden,  and  the  wording 
of  the  preamble  took  away  the  sovereign  power  of  the  States 
as  clearly  as  words  could.  Indeed,  the  first  drafts  of  the 
preamble  had  read,  "We,  the  people  of  New  Hampshire, 
Massachusetts,"  and  so  on,  enumerating  the  States.  The 
words  finally  adopted  were  indeed,  as  Wilson  said,  a  whole 
treatise  on  sovereignty. 

The  States  were  to  be  related  to  the  national  government 
through  the  people.  Wilson  explained  at  length  "the  two 
fold  relation  in  which  the  people  would  stand,  1,  as  Citizens 
of  the  General  Government,  2,  as  Citizens  of  their  particular 
State.  .  .  .  Both  Governments  were  derived  from  the  people 
—both  were  meant  for  the  people — both,  therefore,  ought  to 
be  regulated  on  the  same  principles.  .  .  .  The  General  Govern 
ment  is  not  an  assemblage  of  States,  but  of  individuals  for 
certain  political  purposes — it  is  not  meant  for  the  States, 
but  for  the  individuals  composing  them."5  The  people, 
therefore,  organized  in  sections  formed  the  States;  the  same 
people  viewed  as  a  whole,  not  as  parts,  were  the  basis  of 
the  national  government.  The  value  and  importance  of  the 

speech  is  enlightening.  "He  conceived  that  the  import  of  the  term 
'States,'  'Sovereignty,'  'national,'  'federal'  had  been  often  used  and  ap 
plied  in  the  discussions  inaccurately  and  delusively.  The  States  were 
not  'Sovereigns'  in  the  sense  contended  for  by  some.  .  .  .  They  could 
not  make  war,  nor  peace,  nor  alliances,  nor  treaties.  ...  If  the  States 
therefore  retained  some  portion  of  their  sovereignty,  they  had  certainly 
divested  themselves  of  essential  portions  of  it.  If  they  formed  a  Con 
federacy  in  some  respects — they  formed  a  Nation  in  others." 
B  Hunt's  Madison's  Notes,  I,  233-4. 


174  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

States  was  not  lost  sight  of.  " Without  their  cooperation," 
Ellsworth  reminded  the  Convention,  "it  would  be  impos 
sible  to  support  a  Republican  Government,  over  so  great  an 
extent  of  Country.  .  .  .  The  largest  States  are  the  worst 
governed.  ...  If  the  principles  and  materials  of  our  Govern 
ment  are  not  adequate  to  the  extent  of  these  single  States ; 6 
how  can  it  be  imagined  that  they  can  support  a  single  Govern 
ment  throughout  the  U[nited]  States.  The  only  chance  of 
supporting  a  General  Government  lies  in  grafting  it  on  that  of 
the  individual  States."7 

But  only  the  ultimate  power  was  placed  in  the  hands  of 
the  people.  They  were  given  only  three  legal  duties.  They 
were  to  choose  the  representatives  directly;  they  were  to 
vote  for  the  electoral  college,  which  would  choose  the  Presi 
dent  and  for  the  state  legislatures  which  were  to  choose  the 
Senators;  they  were  to  vote  either  directly  or  by  special  con 
ventions  upon  all  amendments  to  the  Constitution.  But  in 
no  other  way  and  at  no  other  time  should  they  in  any  way 
themselves  participate  in  administration  or  legislation.  They 
should  not  govern ;  they  should  not  even  constantly  direct  the 
hands  which  governed  for  them.  They  should  choose  a 
President,  who,  once  inaugurated,  would  possess  in  himself 
absolute  discretion  in  the  performance  of  the  executive  work 
entrusted  to  him.  During  his  term  of  office,  no  one  should 
control  him  or  dictate  to  him;  he  should  be  supreme.  The 
people,  his  masters,  might  at  the  end  of  his  term  censure  him 
for  what  he  had  done ;  they  might  refuse  to  let  him  act  again 
for  them;  but  they  should  not  legally  prevent  him  during 
his  term  of  office  from  acting  at  any  time  as  he  thought  fit. 
Similarly,  in  the  hands  of  Congress  was  placed  the  whole 
legislative  power;  and  in  the  hands  of  the  judges,  the  whole 
judicial  power.  Each  branch  was  delegated  its  power  by 
the  people;  each  would  be  responsible  to  the  people  at  the 
end  of  its  term,  but  during  that  term  the  framers  intended 
that  each  should  govern  for  the  people.  The  share  of  the 

e  That  is,  are  not  capable  of  governing  a  single  State. 
7  Hunt's  Madison's  Notes,  I,  234. 


THE  CONSTITUTION  175 

people  should  be  ultimate,  not  immediate ;  they  should  control 
the  broader  aspects  of  policy,  not  dictate  the  details  of  meth 
ods  and  means. 

Nor  did  the  framers  understand  that  they  placed  this  sover 
eignty  in  the  hands  of  the  male  citizens  over  twenty-one 
years  of  age.  By  a  general  agreement,  the  federal  suffrage 
was  left  in  the  haiids  of  the  States,  who  were  to  regulate  it 
by  regulating  their  own.  There  was  not  then,  and  never  had 
been,  in  any  State  or  colony,  manhood  suffrage.  A  property 
qualification  had  been  nearly  universal;  oaths  of  fidelity  or 
allegiance  had  been  common;  while  throughout  New  Eng 
land  a  man's  moral  and  religious  character  had  been  closely 
scrutinized  before  he  had  been  granted  a  share  of  political 
power.  It  was  indeed  true  that  the  amount  of  property 
was  not  usually  difficult  to  amass,  nor  the  degree  of  spiritual 
excellence  impossible  of  attainment;  neither  birth  nor  pre 
vious  condition  was  a  permanent  bar.  Any  man  might  be 
come  qualified  for  the  suffrage;  but  it  was  nevertheless  a 
fact  in  1789,  not  much  questioned  or  remarked  upon,  indeed 
accepted  as  axiomatic,  that  the  democracy  viewed  by  the 
framers  of  the  constitution  was  limited  to  men  of  property, 
education,  and  good  character.  Not  till  about  1840  did  the 
words  "People  of  the  United  States"  place  the  sovereignty 
in  the  hands  of  the  male  majority  which  now  has  it.  The 
franchise  was  in  1789  a  privilege  conferred  by  the  State  on 
deserving  citizens;  and  the  lack  of  it  was  not  supposed  to 
imply  the  slightest  right  to  disobey  the  authorities.  Bills 
of  Rights  and  Constitutions  conferred  no  such  privileges. 

It  was  fully  recognized  that  if  the  Federal  Government 
must  govern  for  the  people,  its  executive  arm  should  have 
sufficient  power  to  act.  The  President's  term  of  four  years 
they  believed  too  short  to  enable  him  to  encroach  upon  the 
people's  liberties.  But  that  the  Convention  could  not  pos 
sibly  enumerate  or  even  foresee  the  powers  which  would  in 
the  future  need  to  be  in  the  hands  of  both  President  and 
Congress  was  freely  admitted  and  the  form  of  the  Constitu 
tion  was  in  large  measure  due  to  the  decision,  early  reached, 


176  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

to  sketch  only  the  broad  outlines  of  the  government  and  its 
powers,  and  permit  executive,  legislature,  and  judiciary  to 
read  into  its  broad  clauses  the  authority  which  the  exigencies 
of  State  might  render  imperative.     "The  vagueness  of  the 
terms,"    said   Mr.    Gorham,    " constitutes   the    propriety    of 
them.     We  are  now  establishing  general  principles,  to  be  ex 
tended  hereafter  into  details  which  will  be  precise  and  ex 
plicit." 8     The   Convention  contented  itself,  therefore,  with 
enumerating  the  obviously  necessary  things  which  the  Presi 
dent  and  Congress  must  do,  and  in  broad  terms  conferred 
upon  them  respectively  the  executive  and  legislative  power. 
It  is  this  aspect  of  the  Constitution,  as  its  framers  foresaw, 
which  has  made  it  possible  for  us  to  live  under  it  for  a 
century  and  a  quarter  with  so  little  radical  change.     It  is 
at  present  the  oldest  written  fundamental  law  in  the  world. 
The  framers  were,  however,  alive  to  the  fact  that  such 
great  powers,  so  vaguely  stated,  must  be  controlled.     They 
adopted  the  doctrine  of  the  separation  of  powers,  so  highly 
praised  by  Montesquieu,   as   the   basis  of   the   relations  of 
the  departments  with  each  other.     "It  has  been  agreed  on 
all  hands,"  said  Mason,  "that  an  efficient  Government  is 
necessary :  that  to  render  it  such,  it  ought  to  have  the  faculty 
of  self-defense ;  that  to  render  its  different  branches  effectual, 
each  of  them  ought  to  have  the  same  power  of  self-defense. ' ' 9 
To  fetter  the  three  departments  more  than  this  would  be  to 
sacrifice  unduly  the  efficiency  of  administration,  they  thought. 
A  further  safeguard  they  found  in  the  fact  that  the  prob 
lems  most  vital  in  the  daily  life  of  the  community  were  both 
explicitly  and  implicitly  left  in  the  hands  of  the  States  or 
the  local  town  or  county  governments:  there  would  not  be 
many  things  which  the  Federal  government  could  do  which 
could  much  interfere  with  or  directly  injure  the  private  citi 
zen.     The  different  conditions  in  various  parts  of  the  country 
which  needed  to  be  met  in  widely  divergent  ways  made  the 
division  of  the  country  into  States  very  fortunate,  and  they 

s  Hunt's  Madison's  Notes,  I,  366. 
*Ibid.,  I,  235. 


THE  CONSTITUTION  177 

were  anxious  not  to  interfere  with  what  they  considered  so 
happy  a  circumstance.  In  addition,  the  population  of  about 
four  million  souls  was  still  very  much  scattered  over  the 
Atlantic  seaboard  in  little  groups  separated  still  by  the 
wilderness  at  more  or  less  frequent  intervals.  A  few  people 
in  Maine,  a  few  in  New  Hampshire,  and  a  pretty  thoroughly 
settled  district  in  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  and  Connecti 
cut,  then  a  considerable  fringe  of  settlements  along  the  Hud 
son  and  Mohawk,  and  along  the  Delaware,  around  Chesa 
peake  Bay  and  along  its  rivers,  then  a  gap  till  the  North 
Carolina  settlements  came  into  view,  then  another  gap  until 
South  Carolina  and  its  rice  and  cotton  fields  came  above 
the  horizon  to  the  south-bound  traveler.  The  largest  town 
of  the  infant  country  was  Philadelphia  with  some  75,000 
souls.  New  York  in  1776  possessed  some  2500  buildings,  and 
they  pastured  cows  along  lower  Broadway.  The  chief  prob 
lems  were  local,  not  national,  and  must  be  dealt  with  by  the 
States,  not  by  the  Federal  government.  "Were  not  this 
great  country  already  divided  into  States,"  wrote  Jefferson, 
"that  division  must  be  made,  that  each  might  do  for  itself 
what  concerns  itself  directly  and  what  it  can  so  much  better 
do  than  a  distant  authority.  .  .  .  Were  we  directed  from 
Washington  when  to  sow  and  when  to  reap,  we  should  soon 
want  bread."10  These  same  facts,  coupled  with  the  rival 
ries  already  conspicuous  between  the  States,  would  prevent 
the  Federal  government  from  encroaching  upon  them  and, 
what  was  better,  prevent  them  from  encroaching  upon  the 
legitimate  powers  of  the  Federal  government. 

How  to  put  power  into  the  hands  of  so  many  people  with 
out  allowing  them  to  abuse  it  and  destroy  the  national  gov 
ernment  and  themselves  too,  seemed  to  the  members  of  the 
Convention  their  greatest  problem.  That  the  people  were 
honest  and  capable  of  deciding  the  great  issues  of  State  wisely 
after  due  deliberation,  few  doubted.  In  the  long  run,  they 
would  do  right,  but  the  problem  of  securing  sufficient  time 
for  them  to  deliberate  and  make  up  their  minds  was  the 

10  Memoir,  I,  70.     London,  1829, 


178  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

difficult  issue.  The  Convention  finally  concluded  that  one 
duty  of  the  Federal  government  would  be  to  stand  between 
the  people  and  the  consummation  of  their  first  passionate 
desire.  The  Constitution  should  be  a  restraining  document, 
which  should  create  an  engine  capable  of  preventing  the  peo 
ple  from  having  their  way  for  a  number  of  years.  Far  from 
its  being  intended  that  the  government  should  facilitate  the 
expression  of  the  popular  will,  it  was  in  fact  shaped  so  as  to 
make  difficult  the  fulfilment  of  popular  desire.  "Why  has 
government  been  instituted  at  all?"  asked  Hamilton  in  the 
famous  fifteenth  paper  of  the  Federalist.  "  Because  the  pas 
sions  of  men  will  not  conform  to  the  dictates  of  reason  and 
justice  without  constraint."  To  some  extent  this  determi 
nation  to  restrain  the  people  caused  the  Convention  to  omit 
mention  of  explicit  powers  as  granted  Congress,  which  it 
seemed  dangerous  to  put  firmly  in  the  people's  hands.  As 
Chief  Justice  Marshall  later  phrased  it,  "That  power  might 
be  abused  was  deemed  a  conclusive  reason  why  it  should  not 
be  conferred." 

But  the  framers  were  by  no  means  satisfied  with  omission. 
To  give  the  Senate  a  check  on  both  House  and  President, 
they  made  the  term  of  senators  six  years,  and  made  it  a 
permanent  body  of  men,  by  allowing  two-thirds  to  hold  over 
at  each  election  and  therefore  making  it  impossible  for  the 
legislatures  to  choose  more  than  a  third  of  the  Senate  at 
any  one  time  to  carry  out  some  particular  wish  of  the  peo 
ple.  The  House  of  Kepresentatives  which  the  people  elected 
was  given  a  term  of  only  two  years,  partly  to  render  it  more 
responsive  to  the  people,  partly  to  allow  the  President,  who 
sat  for  four  years  and  the  Senate,  two-thirds  of  which  would 
still  be  sitting,  to  control  it  more  easily.  If  all  three  agreed 
upon  some  measure,  it  would  be  clear  that  the  nation  wanted 
it  and  ought  to  have  its  way.  But  if  any  considerable  op 
position  existed  in  the  country,  enough  of  it  would  be  re 
flected  in  Congress  to  prevent  agreement.  When  all  three 
did  not  agree,  there  was  to  be  no  method  legally  provided 
for  putting  pressure  upon  the  dissenters.  Whether  Presi- 


THE  CONSTITUTION  179 

dent  or  Senate  opposed,  the  highest  duty  of  that  branch 
to  the  people  consisted  in  maintaining  its  firm  front  until 
a  new  election  could  be  held  and  the  people  could  once  more 
indicate  their  desires.  In  four  years  at  the  most,  the  Presi 
dent  and  Senate  could  be  brought  into  agreement  with  the 
House  of  Eepresentatives,  and  if  the  people  were  decided 
enough  in  their  opinion  to  maintain  it  for  four  years,  nothing 
further  could  or  ought  to  be  done  to  prevent  them  from 
having  their  way.  To  the  end  that  this  arrangement  should 
not  cripple  the  efficiency  of  the  Federal  government,  how 
ever,  the  executive  power  was  placed  unreservedly  in  the 
President's  hands:  the  existing  law  should  be  enforced 
promptly  and  efficiently  in  any  case;  new  laws  should  be 
enacted,  new  policies  adopted,  only  after  due  deliberation. 
The  routine  administration  was  made  easy;  the  adoption  of 
new  legislation  was  consciously  made  as  difficult  as  possible. 
After  four  months  of  anxious  debate,  from  May  to  Sep 
tember  1787,  the  Convention  submitted  its  work  to  the  coun 
try,  requesting  that  the  document  should  be  ratified  by  con 
ventions  or  by  popular  vote  in  each  State,  and  that  when 
nine  States  had  accepted  it,  it  should  go  into  operation  as 
binding  upon  those  who  ratified  it.  A  long  and  bitter  cam 
paign  was  fought  in  State  after  State.  The  old  "  Patriot 
party"  of  1775  led  by  Samuel  Adams,  Patrick  Henry,  Me- 
lancthon  Smith  of  New  York,  and  George  Mason  of  Virginia 
felt  that  the  Constitution  sacrificed  all  that  the  Revolution 
had  been  fought  to  win.11  "Who  authorized  them  to  speak 
the  language  of  We  the  People,  instead  of  We  the  States?" 
cried  Henry.12  "I  stumble  at  the  threshold,"  declared  Sam 
uel  Adams,  "I  meet  with  a  national  government  instead  of 
a  federal  union  of  sovereign  States. ' ' 13  The  very  strong 

11  The  Constitution  was  the  "triumph  of  the  legitimate  successors  of 
the  Anti-Revolutionary  party  of  1775."     Judge  Chamberlain  in  Papers 
of  the  American  Historical  Association,  III,  No.  1. 

12  Speech  in  the  Virginia  Convention.     Elliott,  Delates,  III,  22,  29, 
44,   521-522.     "Even  from  that  illustrious  man  who  saved  us  by  his 
valor,  I  would  have  a  reason  for  his  conduct." 

is  Samuel  Adams  to  R.  H.  Lee.     Lee's  Life  of  R.  H.  Lee,  II,  130. 


180  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

objection  was  also  raised  that  the  Convention  had  exceeded 
its  authority.  It  had  been  directed  to  amend  the  Articles  of 
Confederation  and  had  proposed  a  wholly  new  scheme  of 
government.  Nor  were  men  slow  to  remark  that  73  members 
had  been  elected,  of  whom  nearly  a  third  never  attended 
and  of  whom  scarcely  more  than  half  (39)  signed  the  final 
document.  The  boasted  unanimity  was  absent.  Detailed  ob 
jections  of  all  kinds  appeared.  In  Massachusetts,  New  York, 
and  Virginia  the  fight  was  particularly  fierce.  A  series  of 
essays  called  the  Federalist  written  by  Hamilton,  Madison, 
and  Jay,  published  in  New  York  but  widely  read  throughout 
the  country,  were  instrumental  in  convincing  the  people  of 
the  expediency  of  the  new  constitution,  which  was  finally 
adopted  by  eleven  States  in  the  fall  of  1788. 

The  first  elections,  held  in  January  1789,  caused  a  succession 
of  disagreements  in  various  States,  which  for  a  time  threat 
ened  to  prevent  the  choice  of  a  Congress  or  of  presidential 
electors  in  time  to  meet  on  March  4,  the  date  when  the  old 
Congress  of  the  Confederation  was  formally  to  dissolve.  The 
presidential  electors,  however,  finally  did  meet;  the  news 
quickly  spread  that  George  Washington  and  John  Adams 
had  been  elected  President  and  Vice-President  respectively; 
but  when  March  4  dawned,  there  was  no  President-elect  in 
New  York  to  be  inaugurated,  because  the  votes  had  not  been 
officially  counted  and  the  President  not  yet  officially  elected. 
Furthermore,  there  were  not  enough  members  of  either  the 
House  or  the  Senate  in  the  city  to  form  a  quorum  to  count 
the  votes;  the  Assembly  Hall  was  still  in  the  carpenters' 
hands;  and  Washington  and  Adams  both  declined  to  leave 
home  until  they  should  be  officially  assured  of  their  election. 
It  is  most  difficult  for  us  to  understand  to-day  the  anxiety 
and  suspense  of  those  weeks  in  March  and  April  1789,  when, 
with  the  old  government  legally  dead,  it  was  as  yet  more 
than  doubtful  whether  the  new  could  be  even  formally  put  in 
power.  After  weeks  of  alarm  and  speculation,  a  bare  quorum 
in  both  houses  of  Congress  finally  assembled  on  April  6, 
more  than  a  month  after  the  date  set  for  the  inauguration 


THE  CONSTITUTION  181 

of  the  new  President;  the  votes  were  counted;  and  a  fort 
night  later,  on  April  30,  Washington  was  inaugurated.  Few 
people  remember  now  that  in  1789  it  was  doubtful  for 
nearly  two  months  whether  men  could  be  got  together  to  fill 
enough  of  the  formal  posts  created  by  the  new  Constitution 
to  make  it  possible  to  begin  the  task  of  creating  a  new  ad 
ministration.  As  the  Anti-Federalists  derisively  declared,  the 
''old  man"  (Franklin)  and  "the  two  boys"  (Madison  and 
Hamilton)  were  all  wrong:  the  old  roof  had  leaked  but  the 
new  one  was  not  even  on  the  building.  "If  the  system  can 
be  put  in  operation  without  touching  much  the  pockets  of 
the  people,"  wrote  Washington  to  Jefferson,  "perhaps  it 
may  be  done;  but,  in  my  judgment,  infinite  circumspection 
and  prudence  are  yet  necessary  in  the  experiment. ' ' 14 

Fisher  Ames  has  left  us  a  touching  picture  of  Washington 
at  this  time.  Just  after  the  inauguration,  "I  was  present 
in  the  pew  (at  church)  with  the  President  and  must  assure 
you  that,  after  making  all  deductions  for  the  delusion  of 
one's  fancy  in  regard  to  characters,  I  still  think  of  him  with 
more  veneration  than  for  any  other  person.  Time  has  made 
havoc  upon  his  face.  That  and  other  circumstances  not  to  be 
reasoned  about,  conspire  to  keep  up  the  awe  which  I  brought 
with  me.  He  addressed  the  two  Houses  in  the  Senate  Cham 
ber;  it  was  a  very  touching  scene  and  quite  of  a  solemn 
kind.  His  aspect  grave  almost  to  sadness;  his  modesty,  ac 
tually  shaking;  his  voice  deep,  a  little  tremulous,  and  so  low 
as  to  call  for  close  attention;  added  to  the  series  of  objects 
presented  to  the  mind  and  overwhelming  it,  produced  emo 
tions  of  the  most  affecting  kind  upon  the  members."  In 
the  inaugural  address  Washington  had  said:  "The  preser 
vation  of  the  sacred  fire  of  liberty,  and  the  destiny  of  the 
republican  model  of  government,  are  justly  considered  as 
deeply,  perhaps  as  finally,  staked  on  the  experiment  in 
trusted  to  the  hands  of  the  American  people."  Such  were 
the  hopes  and  aspirations,  such  the  sense  of  responsibility, 
with  which  the  fathers  began  work  under  the  Constitution. 

i*  Washington  to  Jefferson,  August  31,  1788.  Writings  of  Washing 
ton.  Sparks,  IX,  426-7. 


XIV 

THE   ESTABLISHMENT   OF   PERMANENT   ADMINIS 
TRATION 

WERE  it  not  for  our  after-knowledge  and  the  realization  that 
the  difficulties  to  be  remedied  were  for  the  most  part  super 
ficial  and  curable,  the  immediate  success  of  the  new  govern 
ment  would  be  as  astonishing  to  us  as  it  was  gratifying  to 
its  contemporaries.  But  the  Constitution  was  not,  as  the 
vast  majority  assumed,  the  cause.  The  secret  lay  in  the 
changed  economic  conditions,  in  the  disappearance  of  the  com 
mercial  stringency  by  the  operation  of  economic  factors  on 
which  governments  and  constitutions  had  no  influence.  Of 
this  Washington  was  well  aware.  "It  was  indeed  next  to  a 
miracle,"  he  wrote  in  1790,  "that  there  should  have  been 
so  much  unanimity  in  points  of  such  importance  among  such 
a  number  of  citizens,  so  widely  scattered,  and  so  different 
in  their  habits  in  many  respects,  as  the  Americans  were.  Nor 
are  the  growing  unanimity  and  increasing  good-will  of  the 
citizens  to  the  government  less  remarkable  than  favorable 
circumstances.  .  .  .  Perhaps  a  number  of  accidental  circum 
stances  have  concurred  with  the  real  effects  of  the  government 
to  make  the  people  uncommonly  well  pleased  with  their  situ 
ation  and  prospects."1 

Chief  among  these,  he  placed  the  natural  reaction  from  a 
long  period  of  business  depression  and  confusion,  and  the 
result  of  the  frugality  and  economy  which  hard  times  inevi 
tably  inculcate.  "I  expect  that  many  blessings  will  be  at 
tributed  to  our  new  government  which  are  now  taking  their 
rise  from  the  industry  and  frugality  into  the  practice  of 
which  the  people  have  been  forced  from  necessity.  I  really 

i  Writings  of  Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  XI,  459. 

182 


ESTABLISHMENT  OF  PERMANENT  ADMINISTRATION      183 

believe  that  there  never  was  so  much  labor  and  economy  to 
be  found  before  in  the  country  as  at  the  present  moment.  .  .  . 
All  these  blessings  (for  all  these  blessings  will  come)  will  be 
referred  to  the  fostering  influence  of  the  new  government. 
Whereas  many  causes  will  have  conspired  to  produce  them."  2 

Among  the  "many  causes"  clearly  belongs  the  very  great 
development  of  the  country  during  the  previous  generation, 
—the  doubling  of  the  population,  the  vast  increase  in  the 
number  of  acres  under  cultivation,  in  the  number  of  ships 
being  built,  in  the  volume  of  produce  seeking  a  market.  A 
French  traveler  declared  that  "on  the  whole,  it  is  difficult 
to  conceive  the  state  of  increase  and  the  prosperity  of  this 
country  after  so  long  and  calamitous  a  war."  Then,  at  the 
very  moment  when  America  had  more  to  sell  than  ever  be 
fore,  a  new  market  for  grain,  naval  stores,  and  all  sorts  of 
staple  crops  was  opened  in  Europe  by  the  outbreak  of  the 
French  Revolution  and  the  resulting  wars.  For  the  first 
time  in  history,  the  Atlantic  coast  was  able  to  export  directly 
to  Europe  on  advantageous  terms.  Moreover,  the  gener 
ality  of  the  European  war  after  1793  deprived  most  of  the 
continental  shipping  of  its  neutral  status,  exposed  it  to 
capture  and  the  cargoes  to  confiscation,  and  thus  left  the 
American  merchant  marine  the  only  considerable  neutral  fleet 
on  the  ocean.  The  really  extraordinary  impulse  to  trade  and 
navigation  from  these  sources  did  not  manifest  itself  clearly 
in  1789,  but  followed  closely  enough  upon  the  inauguration 
of  the  new  government  to  cause  the  people,  as  Washington 
had  predicted,  to  ascribe  the  resulting  prosperity  to  its  oper 
ations.  Economic  forces  thus  gave  the  new  government  time 
to  formulate  its  plans  and  to  establish  the  administration  on 
a  permanent  basis  without  being  so  much  hampered  by  the 
exaggerated  expectations  of  the  people  and  the  demand  for 
immediate  results  as  Washington  and  Hamilton  had  antici 
pated  would  be  the  case.  Moreover,  as  Hamilton  very 
clearly  saw,  the  great  development  during  and  since  the  Revo 
lution  proved  the  country  unquestionably  solvent  and  un- 

2  Writings  of  Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  XI,  279. 


184  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

doubtedly  very  prosperous.  It  demonstrated  conclusively 
that  the  evils  were  more  apparent  than  real,  superficial  rather 
than  fundamental,  and  of  a  nature  which  administrative 
regulations  could  easily  obviate,  if  only  public  confidence 
could  be  long  enough  secured  to  give  them  the  thorough, 
honest  trial  which  would  be  indispensable  to  final  success. 
If  his  plans  for  the  opening  of  trade  channels,  for  the  pro 
vision  of  a  medium  of  exchange,  and  for  the  funding  of  the 
debt  could  be  actually  accepted,  and  better  foreign  relations 
could  be  established  by  diplomacy,  the  moneyed  and  prop 
ertied  class  would  be  firmly  bound  to  the  new  government 
by  the  solid  chain  of  interest  and  the  stability  of  the  new 
regime  therefore  assured.  While  the  immediate  success  of 
the  new  administration  was  clearly  due  to  fortuitous  eco 
nomic  factors,  which  could  neither  have  been  foreseen  nor 
controlled,  its  permanent  success  was  due  to  the  measures  of 
Alexander  Hamilton. 

The  first  session  of  Congress  was  mainly  occupied  with 
the  establishment  of  the  skeleton  of  a  central  administration, 
— the  creation  of  four  departments,  state,  treasury,  war,  and 
judiciary;  and  with  such  questions  as  salaries,  territorial 
government,  Indians,  post-offices,  federal  courts.  The  second 
session,  in  1790,  was  devoted  to  the  discussion  and  adoption 
of  Hamilton's  great  measures  for  the  permanent  solution  of 
those  vital  problems  which  had  caused  the  adoption  of  the 
Constitution.  Of  these  unquestionably  the  most  important 
was  the  refunding  of  the  entire  debt  of  the  Revolutionary 
governments,  state  and  central.  Hamilton  declared  in  favor 
of  paying  the  entire  indebtedness  of  every  sort  and  variety 
at  par:  the  certificates  constituted  a  valid  legal  claim  on 
the  new  government  for  the  sums  mentioned  in  them;  if 
they  were  not  valid  for  the  whole  sum,  he  did  not  believe 
them  legally  valid  at  all.  It  was  imperative  to  establish  the 
credit  of  the  new  government  at  once  and  enable  it  to  borrow 
money  to  meet  the  probable  crises  of  the  future.  It  was 
no  less  imperative  to  tie  to  the  government  the  moneyed 
men  and  the  creditor  class  by  giving  them  a  personal  in- 


ESTABLISHMENT  OF  PERMANENT  ADMINISTRATION      185 

terest  in  its  continuance  and  in  the  future  of  the  Federalist 
party.  Refunding  had  a  political  as  well  as  a  financial 
purpose.  Hamilton's  study  of  English  politics  had  convinced 
him  that  the  men  of  property  exerted  more  political  influ 
ence  than  any  other  class  and  that  the  union  of  financial 
and  commercial  interests  in  the  new  Federalist  party  would 
go  far  to  produce  that  consensus  of  opinion  and  union  of 
political  sentiment  which  the  new  government  so  obviously 
needed.  If  the  citizens  who  held  the  debts  of  the  govern 
ment  were  promised  payment  at  par  of  debts  which  they  had 
expected  would  never  be  paid  at  all,  there  would  be  little 
doubt  of  the  ability  of  the  new  government  to  maintain 
itself. 

To  the  objections  of  the  Anti-Federalists  and  opponents 
of  assumption,  Hamilton  returned  convincing  answers.  Al 
though  the  debt  looked  large,  it  was  not  too  large  to  be 
paid.  Nor  was  its  history  to  be  taken  into  account;  it  was 
a  legal  obligation  and  should  be  treated  accordingly.  Any 
attempt  to  compromise  by  payment  on  the  basis  of  a  scale 
graduated  to  the  previous  market  values  of  the  securities 
would  be  fatal  to  the  prime  object  the  refunding  was  meant 
to  accomplish, — the  establishment  of  the  government's  credit 
both  at  home  and  abroad.  To  many  this  attitude  seemed 
foolhardy  and  unnecessary.  Was  it  not  commonly  acknowl 
edged  that  the  bonds  and  certificates  had  depreciated  in  value 
to  almost  nothing,  and  had  often  been  originally  issued  at 
a  rate  far  below  par?  The  government  would  thus  pay 
even  more  than  the  original  holder  had  loaned.  Was  it  not 
even  truer  that  all  the  certificates  had  changed  hands,  so  that 
the  original  holder  would  not  get  the  profit  Hamilton  pro 
posed  to  allow,  while  a  man  not  at  all  entitled  to  the  gratitude 
of  America  would  calmly  pocket  the  difference  between  the 
small  sum  he  had  paid  and  the  value  of  the  certificates  at 
par?  This  argument  was  strengthened  by  the  knowledge 
that  speculators  had  been  busy  for  some  months  buying  up 
certificates  in  the  country  districts,  imposing  on  the  igno 
rance  and  credulity  of  such  original  holders  as  still  retained 


186  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

their  evidences  of  indebtedness.  The  trade  in  securities  in 
the  larger  cities  was  brisk  and  prices  went  up  and  down 
with  rapidity  according  to  the  news  from  Congress.  Hamil 
ton  was  rewarding  speculation  and  encouraging  gambling, 
vociferated  his  opponents. 

The  really  bitter  debates  took  place  over  the  assumption 
of  the  States  *  debts.  Would  the  country  be  able  to  bear 
the  ruinous  taxation  which  would  be  necessary  to  pay  the 
interest?  Was  account  to  be  taken  of  what  had  already 
/been  paid  by  the  States?  Some  had  paid  much;  others  had 
paid  a  little;  most  had  paid  nothing.  Were  the  honest  then 
to  be  taxed  for  the  payment  of  all  the  debts  of  the  dishonest, 
when  the  share  paid  by  the  latter  of  the  honest  States'  debts 
would  be  proportionately  smaller?  Again,  was  it  wise  to  as 
sume  a  burden  whose  size  no  one  knew?  There  were  indeed 
no  reliable  figures  to  show  what  the  outstanding  indebtedness 
of  the  States  was  and  it  seemed  almost  impossible  to  draw  a 
wholly  accurate  line  between  the  revolutionary  and  pre- 
revolutionary  debts.  Several  States  were  heavily  involved 
as  a  result  of  paper-money  crazes  and  land-bank  schemes  dur 
ing  the  colonial  period,  and  these  debts  the  other  States  were 
vehemently  opposed  to  assuming.  The  debates  were  acrimo 
nious  in  the  extreme :  taunts  over  the  relative  suffering  during 
the  war;  threats  of  secession  if  the  debt  was  not  assumed, 
threats  to  leave  the  union  if  it  was,  were  hurled  back  and 
forth  with  vehemence.  A  bargain  was  finally  struck  at  a 
little  dinner-party  given  by  Jefferson  whereby  the  capitol  was 
located  at  Washington  as  the  Anti-Federalist  forces  and  the 
Southern  States  wished  and  the  debt  was  assumed  as  the  Fed 
eralists  and  the  Northern  States  desired. 

The  debt  of  the  United  States  totaled,  with  the  arrears  of 
interest,  about  fifty-four  millions  of  dollars.  Of  this,  about 
twelve  millions,  principal  and  interest,  was  owed  abroad  and 
was  paid  at  once  in  full  by  the  proceeds  of  a  new  loan.  The 
domestic  debt  of  forty-two  millions  was  to  be  funded  by  the 
exchange  of  the  old  certificates  at  face  value  for  the  new 
bonds  at  par.  No  one  was  to  be  compelled  to  -make  the  ex- 


ESTABLISHMENT  OF  PERMANENT  ADMINISTRATION      187 

change,  but  Hamilton  believed  the  terms  at  which  the  new 
bonds  were  offered  were  sufficiently  advantageous  to  result 
in  the  voluntary  exchange  of  the  bulk  of  the  debt,  and  that 
the  government  would  be  able  to  buy  up  the  rest  in  the 
market.  Each  creditor  received  a  certificate  equal  to  two-  X 
thirds  of  his  indebtedness  which  bore  interest  at  six  per  cent 
at  once,  and  a  certificate  for  the  remaining  third  bearing  in 
terest  at  six  per  cent  after  1800.  The  device  reduced  the 
interest  paid  on  the  whole  debt  to  four  per  cent,  but  con 
cealed  the  fact  from  the  public.  New  bonds  to  the  extent  of 
twenty-one  and  one-half  millions  were  to  be  exchanged  for 
the  States'  indebtedness  at  par,  but  only  about  eighteen  mil 
lions  were  ever  applied  for.  To  these  creditors  were  given 
three  certificates,  one  calling  for  interest  at  six  per  cent  at 
once,  and  one  for  interest  at  three  per  cent  at  once,  and  a 
third  for  interest  at  six  per  cent  after  1800.  By  these  de 
vices  the  total  debt  was  refunded,  paid  off,  or  bought  up,  and 
the  annual  interest  charge  reduced  from  nearly  five  millions 
to  something  over  two.  The  national  revenue  and  the  west 
ern  lands  were  pledged  for  payment  of  principal  and  in 
terest. 

The  refunding  was  a  great  success.  Within  three  years,  the 
bulk  of  the  domestic  debt  had  been  converted;  the  interest 
payments  which  had  seemed  so  huge  in  1790  were  easily  met 
by  the  revenue  from  the  customs;  and  the  government  was 
even  able  to  show  a  small  surplus  six  years  out  of  the  first 
ten,  with  one  year  in  which  expenses  and  receipts  exactly  bal 
anced.  Unquestionably,  the  Federal  government  was  solvent 
and  its  credit  has  never  since  been  questioned.  By  1835, 
the  whole  national  debt  had  been  paid  off.  And  all  had  been 
accomplished  smoothly,  quietly,  and  with  practically  no  ob 
jection  on  the  part  of  the  people.  The  necessity  of  not 
burdening  the  people  with  taxes  at  the  first  was  clearly  ap 
preciated  by  Washington  and  Hamilton.  During  the  colonial 
period  and  the  Revolution,  the  people  had  paid  few  or  no 
taxes  except  to  their  own  local  town  or  county  government; 
the  State  governments  had  needed  little  money.  Hamilton 


188  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

insisted  that  the  people  must  never  see  a  United  States  tax- 
collector;  that  they  must  pay  indirectly  by  customs  and  ex 
cise,  and  would  then  never  realize  what  the  amount  was. 
This  tradition  has  been  on  the  whole  followed  ever  since  with 
unquestioned  success. 

The  army  was  paid  off  in  full  either  in  money,  in  bonds, 
or  in  grants  of  western  land.  Measures  for  the  complete  ful 
filment  of  the  terms  of  the  Treaty  of  Peace  were  undertaken. 
A  national  revenue  was  at  once  created  by  the  imposition  of  a 
tariff  on  imports.  The  adoption  of  the  Constitution  and  the 
establishment  of  the  new  administration  had  abolished  at  once 
the  State  tariffs  on  exports  and  imports,  had  made  discrimi 
nating  duties  favorable  or  hostile  to  any  locality  impossible, 
had  given  all  the  free  use  of  the  rivers  and  roads,  and  had 
assured  the  citizens  of  every  State  the  same  civil  and  com 
mercial  privileges  in  every  State  as  in  their  own.  This  free 
dom  of  intercourse  and  the  abolition  of  restrictions  went  far 
to  remove  the  artificial  obstacles  in  the  way  of  the  growth  of 
trade  and  of  the  complete  rehabilitation  of  the  credit  of  State 
and  Federal  government. 

Some  paper  or  token  money  had  yet  to  be  made,  which 
would  pass  currently  in  America  but  not  in  Europe,  possess 
a  standard  value,  and  be  kept  in  circulation.  A  sufficiently 
large  amount  in  notes  must  be  issued  to  furnish  the  neces 
sary  medium  for  private  and  government  business,  without 
running  the  risk  of  depreciation  on  the  one  hand  because  of 
the  size  of  the  issue,  or  of  the  undue  scarcity  on  the  other 
hand  which  would  be  certain  to  result,  if  the  merchants  or 
the  government  held  any  considerable  quantity  of  it  for  even 
a  few  weeks.  As  at  the  present  day,  money  "flowed"  from 
the  coast  cities  to  the  interior  to  move  the  crops  and  usually 
came  back  again  in  exchange  for  manufactured  goods,  leav 
ing  the  inland  districts  pretty  well  denuded  of  currency  for 
local  business  or  for  government  taxes  until  the  next  year. 
Nor  must  the  government  collect  the  money  in  payment  of 
taxes  and  custom-dues  unless  it  could  immediately  return 
it  to  circulation. 


ESTABLISHMENT  OF  PERMANENT  ADMINISTRATION      189 

Hamilton's  solution  was  the  first  Bank  of  the  United  States, 
chartered  finally  by  Congress  after  a  bitter  fight  over  the  con 
stitutionality  of  the  measure,  with  a  capital  of  ten  millions, 
and  a  monopoly  for  twenty  years.  A  mint  was  established  at 
the  same  time  to  standardize  the  coinage  and  emit  such  specie 
as  could  be  obtained,  but  the  real  currency  was  to  be  the  notes 
of  the  Bank,  which  the  latter  was  to  be  allowed  to  issue  to  an 
amount  not  exceeding  its  capital,  and  which  were  to  be  legal 
tender  for  most  debts  due  the  government  and  for  all  private 
business.  Branches  were  to  be  established  in  convenient 
cities  to  enable  the  Bank  to  become  the  government  agent  in 
different  parts  of  the  country.  The  stock  was  subscribed  in  a 
hurry  and  was  at  once  regarded  as  a  good  investment.  Ac 
cording  to  the  provisions  of  the  law,  one-fifth  of  the  capital 
stock,  two  millions,  was  subscribed  by  the  government  in  its 
own  six  per  cent  bonds ;  one-fifth,  two  millions,  was  paid  in  by 
the  public  in  specie;  and  the  remaining  six  millions  by  the 
public  in  United  States  six  per  cent  bonds.  The  public  and 
the  government,  of  course,  hoped  that  the  dividends  on  the 
stock  would  exceed  the  six  per  cent  interest  which  the  Bank 
itself  got  from  the  government  bonds  it  received  in  exchange 
for  stock ;  the  Bank  expected  by  the  loan  of  the  two  millions 
in  specie  plus  the  six  per  cent  interest  on  the  eight  millions 
of  bonds  to  make  a  good  profit  and  to  be  enabled  to  declare 
dividends.  Such  indeed  was  the  result.  The  public  duly 
paid  in  the  two  millions  in  specie,  which  became  of  course  an 
asset  of  the  Bank.  The  latter  promptly  loaned  the  money  to 
the  government  at  a  fair  interest  and  the  government  too 
had  an  ample  account  from  which  to  meet  its  first  bills.  The 
government  then  deposited  the  two  millions  with  the  Bank  as 
the  government's  agent  and  the  Bank  also  had  the  specie  to 
use.  The  Bank  then  loaned  it  out  to  the  public,  who  returned 
it  to  the  Bank  with  interest  or  paid  it  to  the  government  for 
taxes.  Of  course,  most  of  the  specie  never  left  the  Bank's 
vaults,  and  the  transactions  were  really  performed  by  means 
of  notes,  checks,  or  entries  on  the  books  of  the  Bank,  but 
the  knowledge  that  the  specie  was  there  gave  the  note  issue 


190  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

stability  and  this  careful  utilization  of  the  same  small  stock 
of  specie  by  the  government,  the  Bank,  and  the  public,  kept 
it  in  constant  circulation,  prevented  hoarding,  and  thus  en 
abled  it  to  meet  the  country's  needs.  The  existence  of  the 
branches  and  the  fact  that  the  Bank  was  the  government's 
agent,  permitted  the  transaction  of  the  business  of  the  distant 
sections  of  the  country  without  the  actual  transfer  of  specie 
and  notes  from  one  locality  to  another  and  thus  left  most  parts 
of  the  country  constantly  supplied  with  an  adequate  amount 
of  currency.  By  means  of  the  Bank,  the  government  had 
induced  the  public  to  finance  the  central  government  during 
the  first  years  when  it  must  otherwise  have  borrowed  di 
rectly  sufficient  money  to  meet  its  pressing  needs.  The  suc 
cess  of  the  expedient  made  money  for  the  Bank,  the  govern 
ment,  and  the  public,  and  allowed  the  government  to  control 
the  currency  and  prevent  stringency  or  depreciation  far  bet 
ter  than  it  could  have  through  the  Treasury  itself. 

One  thing  more  remained  to  be  accomplished  before  the 
permanent  success  of  the  central  government  could  be  as 
sured, — the  vast  majority  of  the  people  must  be  brought  to 
believe  in  its  expediency  and  desirability.  Washington  had 
fought  the  Eevolution;  Franklin  had  financed  it;  Madison 
and  Wilson  had  framed  the  Constitution ;  Hamilton  had  put  it 
into  operation.  It  remained  for  Thomas  Jefferson  to  con 
vince  the  great  majority  of  the  people  of  its  excellence  and  to 
reconcile  them  to  the  existence  of  a  central  government  which 
was  something  more  than  a  name. 

The  Constitution,  as  John  Quincy  Adams  later  truthfully 
said,  had  been  "  extorted  by  grinding  necessity  from  a  re 
luctant  people."  Nothing  short  of  the  vivid  fear  of  anarchy 
and  a  possible  resort  to  kingship  reconciled  many  of  the 
leaders  to  the  new  government,  and  it  may  be  safely  claimed 
that  the  people  as  a  whole  understood  the  subtle  legal  and 
constitutional  points  involved  as  little  as  they  usually  have 
comprehended  similar  facts  at  other  epochs  of  history.  After 
we  strip  away  from  the  Revolution  the  preconception  built 
around  it  by  the  struggles  of  the  Civil  War,  we  begin  to 


ESTABLISHMENT  OF  PERMANENT  ADMINISTRATION      191 

realize  that  it  was  an  anti-national  movement,  in  the  sense 
in  which  we  now  use  those  words.  It  was  a  solid  protest  by 
thirteen  States  against  the  encroachment  of  England  upon 
their  individual  sovereignty.  It  was  fought  to  prevent  the 
institution  of  a  central  administration;  its  success  caused  the 
institution  of  the  league  of  amity  between  the  several  States 
known  as  the  Confederation,  whose  chief  point  was  the  in 
alienable  and  imperishable  sovereignty  of  each  State.  With 
the  Constitution,  on  the  other  hand,  the  people  had  adopted 
nationalism  as  we  now  conceive  of  it,  the  principle  of  a  union 
between  individuals,  which  made  the  people  as  a  nation  su 
perior  to  all  the  States  and  the  central  government  superior 
to  any  State  in  its  obligation  upon  the  individual.  We  have 
too  long  discussed  sovereignty  and  States'  rights  with  rela 
tion  to  a  definite  document  and  have  laid  too  little  stress  upon 
the  fact  that  the  full-blown  doctrine  of  States'  rights  is  anti- 
national,  because  it  denies  the  existence,  the  desirability,  and 
the  expediency  of  a  truly  national  government.3  If  there  was 
no  nation  in  existence  in  1776  and  in  1783,  if  the  people  were 
unswervingly  loyal  to  the  old  colonial  notion  of  States'  sov 
ereignty  until  the  eve  of  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution, 
it  will  be  apparent  that  the  adoption  of  that  document  did 
not  disabuse  them  at  once  of  the  notions  they  had  so  long 
cherished  nor  by  some  occult  operation  deprive  them  of  their 
preference  for  local  authority.  Whatever  the  legal  effect  of 
the  preamble  of  the  Constitution  was,  whatever  the  leaders 
of  both  Federalist  and  Anti-Federalist  parties  conceded  it 
to  be,  the  people  as  a  whole  little  appreciated  the  full  signifi 
cance  of  its  adoption  and  assumed  that  they  had  done  little 

3  "I  am  sure,"  said  Patrick  Henry,  opposing  the  Constitution  in  the 
Virginia  Convention,  "they  [the  framers]  were  fully  impressed  with 
the  necessity  of  forming  a  great  consolidated  government,  instead  of  a 
confederation.  That  this  [the  Constitution]  is  a  consolidated  govern 
ment  is  demonstrably  clear;  and  the  danger  of  such  a  government  is, 
to  my  mind,  very  striking.  .  .  .  States  are  the  characteristics  and  the 
soul  of  a  confederation.  If  the  States  be  not  the  agents  of  this  com 
pact,  it  must  be  one  great,  consolidated,  national  government,  of  the 
people  of  all  the  States."  Elliott's  Debates,  III,  21,  22.  As  a  national 
government,  Henry  opposed  it. 


192  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

more  than  remodel  the  old  Congress  and  permit  it  to  regulate 
trade,  impose  taxes,  and  pay  off  the  debt. 

Miracles  had  been  promised  and  expected;  on  the  whole 
miracles  happened;  but  the  most  marvelous  of  things  become 
dulled  after  a  thorough  acquaintance.  Soon  the  vast  majority 
forgot  how  much  the  new  Federal  government  had  accom 
plished,  began  to  clamor  for  what  it  could  not  do,  and  became 
dissatisfied.  From  the  Revolution  the  majority  had  inherited 
a  hatred  of  England  and  an  admiration  for  France,  which 
was  much  heightened  by  the  outbreak  in  the  latter  country  of 
the  Revolution  and  by  the  proclamation  of  democratic  ideas, 
which  the  Americans  readily  assumed  were  identical  with 
their  own.  Because  the  English  promptly  disavowed  the 
principles  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  because  the  Federal 
ists  wished  to  wait  for  the  institution  of  firm  government  in 
France  before  recognizing  the  new  Republic,  the  Anti-Federal 
ists  concluded  that  the  administration  was  English,  * '  monarch 
ical,  ' '  and  dominated  by  l '  a  corrupt  Treasury  Squadron. ' ' 

The  attempt  to  live  under  the  new  Constitution  had  revealed 
the  need  of  definition,  and  the  discretion  and  latitude  of  in 
terpretation  allowed  Congress  and  the  President  alarmed  the 
Anti-Federalists ;  the  excise  and  other  new  taxes  they  thought 
obnoxious ;  the  prompt  suppression  of  the  Whisky  Rebellion  in 
western  Pennsylvania  augured  a  strength  in  the  new  govern 
ment  dangerous  to  the  sovereignty  of  the  individual  States. 
Jay's  proposed  treaty  with  England  in  1794  furnished  the 
occasion  for  the  outbreak  of  as  virulent  an  attack  upon  the 
administration  and  its  motives  as  has  been  seen  in  this  country. 
All  things  considered,  the  terms  he  secured  from  England 
were  favorable ;  they  were,  however,  so  far  below  the  expecta 
tions  of  the  people  that  the  outcry  was  immediate :  the  Feder 
alists  had  sacrificed  America  to  the  British  interest.  In  fact, 
the  prompt  success  of  the  Federalist  measures  plus  the  unex 
pected  changes  in  the  economic  situation  had  suddenly  re 
moved  the  " grinding  necessity"  which  had  extorted  the  Con 
stitution  from  the  reluctant  majority.4  The  panic  was  over 

*  "The  great  number  of  new  and  elegant  buildings  which  have  been 


ESTABLISHMENT  OF  PERMANENT  ADMINISTRATION      193 

and  the  more  timid  as  well  as  the  more  venturesome  began 
to  wonder  whether  things  had  not  gone  far  enough. 

The  Anti-English,  Anti-Federalist,  anti-centralization  move 
ment  found  its  leader  in  Thomas  Jefferson,  who  really  repre 
sented  the  majority  whom  Hamilton  was  seeking  to  rule.  His 
early  experience  in  Virginian  politics  and  long  residence  on 
the  frontier  had  brought  him  into  contact  with  the  sort  of 
citizens  who  formed  the  majority  in  America;  his  long  resi 
dence  in  France  as  ambassador  had  familiarized  him  with 
Rousseau's  ideas  of  theoretical  democracy  and  with  their  en 
thusiastic  reception  abroad.  Soon  after  his  return  to  America 
and  his  entrance  into  the  Cabinet,  he  became  acutely  conscious 
of  the  antagonism  between  his  notions  of  right  and  expediency 
and  those  of  Washington  and  Hamilton,  and,  as  well,  ap 
preciated  the  all-important  fact  that  the  latter  were  at 
variance  with  the  majority  of  the  people.  He  soon  resigned 
from  the  Cabinet  and  went  into  open  opposition.  He  sensed 
his  own  agreement  with  the  people  and  began  consciously  to 
organize  the  Anti-Federalists  and  to  prepare  the  way  for  the 
overthrow  of  the  Federalists  at  the  coming  presidential  elec 
tions.  Through  newspapers  which  he  subsidized,  through 
public  meetings,  private  letters,  and  all  other  available 
methods,  he  carried  on  a  systematic  campaign  to  discredit  the 
Federalist  leaders  and  their  policies  in  the  eyes  of  the  people. 
The  arrival  of  the  envoy  of  the  new  French  Republic,  Citizen 
Genet,  gave  Jefferson  an  admirable  opportunity,  and  he  con 
trived  to  raise  a  good  many  other  issues  which  put  the  Federal- 
erected  in  this  Town  [Boston],  within  the  last  ten  years,  strike  the  eye 
with  astonishment,  and  prove  the  rapid  manner  in  which  these  people 
have  been  acquiring  wealth.  The  revolutionary  situation  of  Europe, 
has  made  them  the  most  exclusive  [extensive]  Carriers  of  the  Powers 
at  War  with  Great  Britain' — their  extensive  Fisheries  and  Lumber 
Trade,  with  a  great  surplus  of  Provisions  and  other  staple  commodities 
for  exportation,  which  they  have  been  permitted,  almost  without  re 
straint,  to  carry  to  Great  Britain  and  her  Islands,  have  filled  them 
with  that  Wealth  the  operative  effects  of  which  are  so  visible  in  every 
direction,  that  they  cannot  fail  to  strike  the  eye  of  even  a  superficial 
observer."  John  Howe  to  Provost,  May  5,  1808.  American  Historical 
Review,  XVII,  78-9.  Howe  was  sent  by  the  Lieutenant  Governor  of 
Halifax  to  view  and  describe  conditions  in  the  United  States. 


194  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

1st  administration  apparently  in  the  wrong  and  so  rendered  it 
unpopular. 

Even  had  the  Federalists  been  supported  at  the  first 
by  a  clear  majority  of  the  people,  and  even  if  their 
majority  in  the  first  Congresses  and  their  victory  in  the  first 
presidential  elections  had  not  been  partially  due  to  a 
disposition  to  give  the  men  who  had  secured  the  adoption  of 
the  Constitution  a  fair  chance  to  put  it  into  operation,  Jef 
ferson  would  have  had  little  difficulty  in  defeating  them 
eventually,  because  they  soon  disagreed  with  each  other  over 
vital  policies.  Hamilton,  with  all  his  brilliance  and  ability, 
had  not  the  tact  needed  to  handle  men  who  disagreed  with 
him;  the  difficulties  were  enhanced  by  the  attitude  of  Jef 
ferson  and  his  subsidized  press;  and  Hamilton  was  compelled 
to  resign  from  the  Cabinet  and  direct  the  government's  busi 
ness  from  outside.  While  Washington  remained  President, 
this  was  not  difficult,  but  the  inauguration  of  Adams  at  once 
made  trouble,  for  Adams  personally  distrusted  Hamilton  and 
was  angry  at  finding  his  own  Cabinet  officers  seeking  counsel 
from  Hamilton  which  he  felt  they  should  have  asked  of  him. 
The  rift  in  the  Federalist  party  grew  greater  and  greater ;  the 
rivalry  for  the  leadership  of  its  parts  began  to  be  keen;  Jef 
ferson  had  now  perfected  his  organization  and  drew  first  the 
people  and  then  the  leaders  over  to  his  side. 

The  presidential  election  of  1800  was  even  unnecessarily  de 
cisive:  the  Federalist  support  simply  disappeared.  John 
Adams  in  a  rage  appointed  as  many  officers  as  he  could  be 
fore  the  third  of  March  1801,  made  John  Marshall  Chief 
Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and  left  Washington  in  high 
dudgeon.  From  the  victory  flowed  surprising  results,  but 
none  more  astonishing  than  the  complacency  with  which  the 
Anti-Federalists  began  to  employ  the  powers  which  they  had 
so  often  denounced.  Once  in  office,  they  found  that  the  Con 
stitution  could  be  as  easily  interpreted  to  perform  what  they 
thought  right  as  it  could  to  do  what  they  thought  wrong. 
Jefferson,  too,  furnished  a  rule  of  interpretation  which  gave 
general  satisfaction,  though  its  illustrious  framer  did  not  in- 


ESTABLISHMENT  OF  PERMANENT  ADMINISTRATION       195 

variably  observe  it.  The  Federal  government  should  be  "the 
American  department  of  foreign  affairs";  the  strictest  pos 
sible  construction  should  be  placed  upon  the  broad  phrases  of 
the  Constitution;  the  Federal  government  should  do  only 
what  was  absolutely  necessary,  never  what  seemed  merely  de 
sirable;  all  else  should  be  left  to  the  States.  On  the  whole, 
declared  Jefferson,  the  less  government  the  better.  With  the 
Constitution,  thus  interpreted,  the  vast  majority  were  thor 
oughly  well  suited,  and  in  general  the  talk  about  the  wicked 
ness  and  undesirability  of  central  government  disappeared. 
Jefferson  had  performed  the  very  great  service  of  reconciling 
the  people  to  their  own  Constitution,  of  fostering  that  gen 
eral  consensus  of  opinion  that  the  central  government  was  a 
good  thing  and  that  its  form  and  policy  were  about  right, 
without  which  in  the  long  run  no  government  can  exist.  He 
did  it  by  interpreting  the  document  in  the  light  of  the  peo 
ple's  ideas  instead  of  by  the  notions  of  its  framers. 


XV 

THE  WAR  OF  1812 

ONE  great  difficulty  we  meet  in  studying  the  long  period  be- 
between  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  and  the  outbreak  of 
the  Civil  War  in  1861  lies  in  the  necessity  of  remembering 
that  the  colonial  issues  were  not  completely  settled  in  1789 
and  did  not  then  give  way  to  entirely  new  issues  around  which 
subsequent  events  group  themselves.  The  unity  of  American 
history  is  found  rather  in  the  identity  of  issues  throughout 
our  growth  and  development.  The  Revolution,  the  Constitu 
tion,  and  the  victory  of  the  Anti-Federalists  had  not  definitely 
settled  anything  more  than  the  two  cardinal  but  none  the  less 
elementary  facts,  that  England  was  not  to  interfere  with  our 
internal  relations,  and  that  a  central  government  of  some 
strength  ought  to  be  maintained.  Still  pressing  for  solution 
were  the  really  fundamental  difficulties, — our  commercial  re 
lations  with  European  nations  and  with  their  colonies,  an 
economic  difficulty  of  the  first  magnitude  which  the  Revolu 
tion  had  only  intensified;  the  relations  of  the  States  to  each 
other  and  to  the  central  government,  the  national  issue;  the 
powers  of  the  central  government,  what  sort  of  a  central  gov 
ernment  did  we  want,  the  constitutional  issue. 

The  Revolution  had  declared  us  politically  independent  of 
Europe,  and  the  men  of  1776  had  apparently  supposed  that 
the  winning  of  the  war  would  free  us  from  all  the  disagree 
able  commercial  chains  which  bound  us  so  closely  to  England 
and  to  her  West  India  colonies.  The  Confederation  had  been 
the  anti-national  solution  of  the  relations  of  the  States  to 
each  other  and  had  been  put  into  effect  by  the  radical  party 
which  had  won  the  Revolution.  Out  of  the  economic  crisis 
and  the  failure  of  the  radicals  to  cope  with  it  had  grown  the 

196 


THE  WAR  OF  1812  197 

union  of  the  conservative  and  propertied  elements  which  had 
made  possible  the  formulation  and  adoption  in  the  Consti 
tution  of  a  distinctly  national  solution  of  the  struggle  between 
the  States.  Yet  it  was  apparent,  before  the  Constitution  was 
adopted,  that  the  national  solution  by  no  means  satisfied  every 
one  and  was  eminently  distasteful  to  a  majority  which  grew 
in  size  and  vehemence  every  year.  The  War  of  1812  was  the 
culmination  of  a  period  of  unrest  and  dissatisfaction  which 
had  its  real  beginnings  in  the  Anti-Federalist  approval  of  the 
Whisky  Rebellion  and  their  opposition  to  the  Jay  Treaty.  It 
was,  like  the  Revolution,  a  struggle  between  forces  in  America 
as  well  as  a  war  between  England  and  America.  Its  causes 
were  the  same  fundamental  difficulties  which  had  led  to  the 
Revolution  and  which  were  to  lead  to  civil  war  in  1861:  on 
the  one  hand,  the  economic  dependence  of  this  country  on 
Europe,  and,  on  the  other,  the  fact  that  the  States  in  America 
were  neither  one  nation  nor  different  nations,  had  neither  the 
same  interest  nor  different  interests,  were  not  independent 
but  interdependent. 

To  the  apparent  surprise  of  the  Americans,  the  Treaty  of 
1783  excluded  them  promptly  from  the  English  West  India 
Islands  and  from  the  Newfoundland  fisheries  and  gave  them 
the  status  of  foreigners,  with  absolutely  no  rights  at  all  under 
English  legislation  and  no  privileges  whatever  under  any 
other  nation 's  regulations.  Temporary  arrangements,  highly 
unsatisfactory  to  American  merchants,  had  been  made  before 
1789  with  several  countries,  but  the  Federalist  administra 
tion  had  quickly  seen  that  better  terms  were  essential  and 
had  sent  Jay  to  England  to  negotiate  a  treaty.  After  weary 
months  of  argument,  he  was  able  to  secure  some  agreement  in 
regard  to  the  evacuation  of  the  western  lands  and  other  mat 
ters  not  regarded  in  America  as  imperative,  but  upon  the  vital 
matter  of  commercial  relations  and  respect  for  our  shipping 
on  the  high  seas,  so  little  was  conceded  that  the  Senate  in  high 
indignation  rejected  that  clause  of  the  treaty  altogether.  At 
the  same  time,  considering  the  almost  universal  American 
hostility  towards  England,  our  failure  to  fulfil  our  earlier 


1»8  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

treaty  obligations,  the  very  general  laudation  of  the  French 
Revolution  and  of  what  the  English  deemed  anarchistic  senti 
ments,  England  was  hardly  to  be  blamed  for  displaying  some 
reluctance  at  making  substantial  and  valuable  concessions 
which  we  were  scarcely  in  a  position  to  requite,  and  which 
really  amounted  to  nothing  less  than  the  voluntary  restora 
tion  on  England's  part  of  that  complete  freedom  of  inter 
course  which  the  States  had  long  enjoyed  as  colonies  and  had 
so  lately  rejected  with  contumely  as  something  quite  worth 
less.  Were  the  English  then  to  forget  that  the  Revolution  had 
happened,  to  swallow  our  affronts  and  insults  without  resent 
ment? 

Moreover,  the  Jay  Treaty  episode  was  scarcely  begun  be 
fore  circumstances  had  entirely  altered  the  situation  and  every 
year  made  more  inexpedient  the  resumption  by  England  of 
the  earlier  status  quo,  even  had  pride  and  a  natural  resent 
ment  against  disloyal  subjects  not  continued  to  influence  the 
English  decisions.  By  1800  the  new  facts  were  appallingly 
clear.  Since  the  outbreak  of  the  French  Revolution  and  more 
especially  since  the  beginning  of  the  general  European  war  in 
1793,  a  market  for  American  staple  products  had  appeared  in 
Europe,  and  a  demand  for  neutral  ships  to  handle  the  carry 
ing  trade.  Both  had  redounded  to  the  benefit  of  the  United 
States,  had  caused  our  export  trade  to  revive,  had  furnished 
us  with  the  much  needed  medium  of  exchange  with  Europe, 
and  had  given  an  impetus  to  the  growth  of  our  merchant 
marine  which  made  it  a  factor  on  the  sea  to  be  reckoned  with. 
While  the  statistics  are  not  perhaps  very  reliable,  it  seems 
reasonably  clear  that  within  a  decade  after  1792  the  tonnage 
of  American  shipping  increased  five  hundred  per  cent,  from 
two  hundred  thousand  tons  to  one  million  tons.  England 
awoke  to  the  existence  of  a  new  commercial  rival  whose  oper 
ations  threatened  to  interfere  more  and  more  every  year  with 
her  monopoly  of  the  carrying  trade.  Nor  was  it  unnatural 
for  her  to  conclude  that  we  were  allies  of  France  and  there 
fore  pledged  to  her  own  destruction.  We  were  making  our 
chief  profit  out  of  supplying  her  enemies  with  food  and  out 


THE  WAR  OF  1812  199 

of  carrying  their  trade  in  our  neutral  vessels  from  one  point 
to  another  under  the  very  noses  of  her  cruisers.  Fuel  was  of 
course  added  to  the  flames  by  the  discovery  that  the  old  plan 
to  annex  Canada,  which  had  been  so  prominent  among  the 
early  movements  of  the  Revolution,1  was  still  alive  and  was 
received  with  great  favor  in  the  West  and  North.  In  1789  and 
in  1804  something  more  than  talk  was  on  foot,  though  it  was 
not  and  is  not  clear  how  far  the  matter  went.2  Should  the 
English  also  supinely  surrender  Canada? 

Accordingly,  the  English  proceeded  to  treat  us  as  they  had 
treated  other  commercial  rivals  and  fought  us  with  the  self 
same  weapons  which  had  been  so  efficacious  against  the 
French,  Dutch,  and  Spanish.  They  proclaimed  at  once  the 
right  to  search  all  vessels  on  the  high  seas  for  contraband 
goods  and  refused  as  before  to  accept  the  doctrine  that  neutral 
ships  make  neutral  goods.  Everything  going  to  France  was 
contraband.  In  the  West  Indies  and  off  Newfoundland  the 
British  cruisers  did  their  best  to  enforce  strictly  the  now 
doubly  obnoxious  provision  of  the  old  Navigation  Acts  and 
were  more  successful  than  ever  before.  The  treatment  ac 
corded  American  vessels  in  English  ports  and  American 

1  The   attempts    to    obtain    Canada   during   the    Revolution    are   con 
veniently  summarized  by  J.  H.  Smith  in  Our  Struggle  for  the  Four 
teenth  Colony,  New  York,  1907.     Franklin's  letters  and  the  Journal  of 
the  Continental  Congress  contain  pregnant  and  interesting  information. 

2  Interesting  material  on  the  situation  just  previous  to  the  War  of 
1812  is  to  be  found  in  the  secret  reports  of  John  Howe,  an  Englishman 
sent  to  the  United  States  in   1808  to  report  upon  conditions,  popular 
and   official   opinions   and    intentions,    to   the    Lieutenant    Governor    of 
Halifax,   Sir  George  Provost.     He   made  a  very  careful   and  thorough 
investigation  and  reported  very  fully   upon  what   he    saw  and   heard. 
"But,  they  say,  we  can  take  the  British  Provinces  of  Canada,  Nova 
Scotia,  and  New  Brunswick;   ...  all  the  Military  preparations  in  this 
Country  can  only  have  references  to   the   British   Colonies.  ...  It   is 
amusing  to  hear  them  talk  here  of  the  extreme  facility  with  which  they 
can  possess  themselves  of  the   British   Provinces."     Howe  to   Provost, 
from  Washington,  Nov.  27,  1808.     "The  Conquest  of  Canada  they  con 
template  as  a  matter  perfectly  easy;   and  whenever  they  speak  of  it 
they  build  much  on  the  disposition   of   the   Canadians   as   friendly  to 
them.  .  .  .  Men  of  all  parties  think  if  a  War  should  ensue  that  the 
Conquest  of  these  Colonies  is  certain.'*     Howe  to  Provost,  May  19,  1809. 
American  Historical  Review,  XVII,  342-3;  354. 


200  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

sailors  from  the  confiscated  ships  was  captious  and  offensive. 
In  the  Mississippi  Valley,  the  English  still  held  important 
posts  and  incited  revolts  among  the  Indians. 

But  most  obnoxious  of  all  from  the  American  point  of  view 
was  the  so-called  ' '  right ' '  to  arrest  English  deserters  wherever 
they  could  be  found  and  the  defense  of  the  operations  of  the 
press-gang.  The  English  notion  had  always  been  that  a  man 
born  in  England  would  always  be  an  English  subject;  they 
had  always  declined  to  recognize  any  oaths  or  acts  of  his  as 
a  valid  release  from  his  responsibility  to  England.  To  prove 
a  man  of  English  birth  or  to  have  been  an  English  citizen  was 
to  prove  he  was  still  one.  This  notion  of  indefeasible  al 
legiance  therefore  denied  the  right  of  an  Englishman  to  take 
an  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  United  States  which  would  consti 
tute  a  valid  severance  of  his  connections  with  England ;  it  was 
tantamount  to  a  refusal  to  recognize  the  citizenship  of  a  very 
large  number  of  Americans  in  1800,  who  had  no  intention 
whatever  of  returning  to  England  and  felt  nothing  but  hatred 
for  that  country.  Here  was  of  course  a  subject  on  which  com 
promise  was  hardly  possible :  the  right  of  the  United  States  to 
protect  its  citizens  was  clearly  infringed  by  the  refusal  of 
England  to  admit  that  large  numbers  of  Americans  were 
citizens  of  the  United  States  at  all. 

The  necessity  for  action  on  the  part  of  the  United  States 
was  particularly  clear  because  of  the  operations  of  the  Eng 
lish  press-gang.  The  British  navy  was  chiefly  manned  by 
conscripts  and  by  men  forced  into  the  service  by  questionable 
methods.  The  press-gang  from  a  battleship  would  go  ashore 
in  any  town  it  happened  to  be  near,  whether  in  England  or 
elsewhere,  and  seize  by  main  force  the  sturdy-looking  men 
it  met,  carry  them  off  to  the  ship,  and  compel  them  to  serve 
as  sailors.  Poor  pay,  bad  food,  strict  discipline,  degrading 
punishment,  as  well  as  the  prospect  of  being  killed  in  battle, 
made  the  service  highly  distasteful  to  Englishmen  and  par 
ticularly  onerous  to  the  unfortunates  "pressed"  into  it.  De 
sertions  were  therefore  common  and  it  was  certainly  true  that 
many  an  American  merchant-ship  was  manned  by  British  de- 


THE  WAR  OF  1812  201 

serters  and  that  many  and  many  an  American  citizen  was  a 
deserter  from  the  English  navy,  who  sought  to  save  himself 
from  the  severe  penalties  for  desertion  by  forswearing  his  al 
legiance.  To  cope  with  the  difficulty,  the  English  cruisers 
landed  a  press-gang  in  the  various  ports  they  called  at  and 
seized  on  sight  and  without  investigation  every  man  they 
thought  looked  like  an  English  sailor.  They  also  stopped 
American  merchantmen  on  the  high  seas  or  in  American  har 
bors,  lined  up  the  crew,  and  selected  those  they  thought  were 
British  deserters.  Had  they  not  also  availed  themselves  of  the 
opportunity  to  collect  all  likely-looking  men  without  regard 
to  their  previous  history  or  origin,  the  American  case  would 
still  have  been  incontestable.  There  is  no  doubt  that,  by  1812, 
many  men  born  in  America,  who  had  never  set  foot  in  Eng 
land,  had  been  thus  forced  into  the  British  service.  Had  the 
English  been  willing  to  confine  themselves  to  the  merchant 
marine,  the  situation  would  not  have  become  so  intolerable. 
But  the  victories  of  Nelson  made  them  even  more  arrogant 
than  before  and  caused  the  detention  of  United  States  war 
ships  from  which  American  citizens  were  taken  and  compelled 
to  serve  in  the  British  navy.3  A  clearer  insult  to  this  country 
could  hardly  be  conceived  than  this  refusal  to  recognize  the 
citizenship  of  the  men  enlisted  in  its  official  navy  under  the 
United  States  flag. 

The  growing  tensity  of  English  relations  only  made  more 
apparent  the  divergence  of  opinion  in  the  United  States  and 
stimulated  the  local  discord  which  had  for  a  time  been  ended 
by  the  success  of  the  Federalist  administrations.  Scarcely 
had  the  loss  of  American  privileges  in  the  West  India  Is- 

3"!  am  informed,  by  a  gentleman  on  whose  information  I  think  I 
can  rely,"  wrote  Howe  to  Provost,  "that  when  she  [the  famous  frigate, 
Constitution,]  was  paid  off  here  [at  New  York]  and  her  men  discharged, 
there  was  not  twenty  American  sailors  belonging  to  her,  that  her  whole 
crew  with  the  exception  of  a  few  other  foreigners,  was  entirely  com 
posed  of  British  seamen."  June  7,  1808.  American  Historical  Review, 
XVII,  86.  Such  information  naturally  •  encouraged  the  English  govern 
ment  to  continue  the  search.  Nor  were  they  displeased  to  learn  from 
Howe  that  the  majority  of  the  people  he  met  in  New  England  admitted 
the  justice  of  the  English  claims  and  acts.  Ibid.,  89. 


202  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

lands  and  in  the  fisheries  been  apprehended  than  talk  of  dis 
union  and  secession  began  in  the  Mississippi  Valley.  The 
people  who  had  settled  west  of  the  mountains  had  come  to 
realize  that  the  Mississippi  was  the  only  possible  outlet  for 
their  commerce  and  that  the  mouth  of  the  river,  and  hence 
control  of  its  navigation,  was  in  the  hands  of  Spain.  They 
believed  the  Spanish  anxious  to  close  the  river  to  American 
trade,  and  they  so  well  appreciated  the  mutual  advantages, 
both  to  the  Spanish  and  to  the  Atlantic  States,  of  the  estab 
lishment  of  intercourse  between  the  Spanish  West  India  colo 
nies  and  the  Atlantic  coast,  that  they  were  afraid  Congress 
would  allow  Spain  to  close  the  Mississippi  in  exchange  for 
commercial  privileges  in  the  Spanish  West  Indies.  As  early 
as  1786  this  notion  was  current  in  the  West,  and,  after  the 
new  Constitution  had  vested  in  the  central  government  power 
to  regulate  commerce  and  to  deal  with  western  lands,  the 
malcontents  in  Kentucky  and  Tennessee  became  sure  that 
such  was  the  design.4  Negotiations  were  opened  with  the 
Spanish  at  New  Orleans  and  at  St.  Louis,5  and  the  Virginia 
and  Kentucky  Resolutions  of  1798  were  somehow  connected 
with  the  agitation  for  secession.6  With  this  western  senti 
ment,  the  Southern  States  largely  sympathized,  and  the  Anti- 
Federalists  all  over  the  country  were  disposed  to  complain 
vigorously  of  English  insolence  and  encroachment  and  to  de 
clare  themselves  in  favor  of  no  compromise  and  of  an  insist 
ence  upon  demands  to  which  England  clearly  would  not 
accede. 

In  New  England,  on  the  other  hand,  and  in  mercantile 
circles  all  along  the  Atlantic  coast,  there  was  a  disposition 
to  insist  less  and  negotiate  more.  Some  sort  of  agreement 
with  England  was  far  more  essential  to  them  and  their  busi- 

*  Writings  of  Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  XI,  239;  240  note.  Tyler's 
Life  of  Henry  and  Rowland's  Life  of  Mason. 

8  The  Missouri  Historical  Society,  St.  Louis,  has  a  valuable  collection 
of  manuscript  material  on  this  subject.  Houck's  Missouri  contains 
material  from  Spanish  archives. 

6  Writings  of  Jefferson,  Ford's  ed.,  VII,  263,  281,  290  note.  Jeffer 
son's  counsel  against  secession  prevented  further  action. 


THE  WAR  OF  1812  203 

ness  than  it  was  to  the  interior  and  western  districts,  and 
they  realized  far  more  adequately  the  impossibility  of  dic 
tating  terms  to  England,  and  the  very  great  difficulty  under 
the  circumstances  of  obtaining  from  her  a  working  com 
promise,  that  would  give  them  a  part  of  what  they  hoped  ulti 
mately  to  obtain.  The  mercantile  community  was  therefore 
in  favor  of  minimizing  the  disputes  over  the  right  of  search 
and  impressment,  which  militated  against  individuals  rather 
than  against  the  country  as  a  whole  and  on  which  no  com 
promise  was  possible,  in  the  hope  of  obtaining  some  rights  of 
navigation  which  would  certainly  redound  to  the  benefit  of 
the  vast  majority  of  Americans.  The  loud  talk  of  reprisal 
upon  English  ships,  the  insistence  upon  reparation  for  in 
sult,  the  general  hostile  tone  assumed  toward  England,  the 
laudation  of  France  and  everything  French,  these  the  New 
Englanders  well  knew  only  made  more  and  more  difficult  the 
arrival  at  any  agreement.7  Even  after  the  overt  outrage 
against  the  Chesapeake  in  1807,  they  hotly  protested  against 
anything  being  done  likely  to  rouse  the  hostility  of  England.8 
And  now  came  in  1800,  like  a  bolt  from  the  blue,  the  news 
that  Spain  had  ceded  Louisiana  to  France.  How  large  a  ter 
ritory  it  was,  how  far  west  it  extended,  what  the  character 
of  the  land  was,  no  one  knew,  and  few  had  more  than  the 
vaguest  ideas  about  it;  but  one  thing  all  apprehended;  the 

7  "On  general  politics,"  Howe  reported,  "they  appear  more  disposed 
to  blame  their  own  Government  than  ours.  .  .  .  The  irritation  against 
Great  Britain  is  fast  wearing  off  and  the  most  anxious  wish  appears  to 
be  a  renewal  of  the  Commercial  Intercourse  between  the  Countries.  .  .  . 
They  feel  how  necessary  her  [England's]  friendship  is  to  their  pros 
perity."  American  Historical  Review,  XVII,  79-80.  Boston,  May  5, 
1808.  From  New  York  he  wrote  on  May  31,  of  the  feeling  in  Connecti 
cut:  "Here  they  speak  upon  the  subject  [the  Embargo]  with  a  degree 
of  boldness  that  astonished  me,  and  many  of  them  even  lamenting  pub 
licly  that  ever  they  were  separated  from  Great  Britain."  Ibid.,  83. 

s  The  Chesapeake  affair  is  frequently  mentioned  by  Howe,  who  con 
cluded  that  the  majority  in  New  England  took  a  stand  against  their 
own  government.  At  Philadelphia  he  found  a  celebration  of  the  anni 
versary  of  the  affair,  made  to  excite  the  people  against  England.  "But 
it  is  by  all  discreet,  well-disposed  persons  here  (and  this  body  I  am 
happy  to  say  is  very  numerous)  looked  upon  with  disgust."  June  22, 
1808.  Ibid.,  94. 


204  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

cession  included  New  Orleans  and  the  control  of  the  Missis 
sippi,  and  the  diplomatic  world  promptly  exhausted  itself  in 
surmises  as  to  its  purpose.  Jefferson  and  his  Cabinet,  in 
common  with  most  thinking  men  in  the  country,  felt  that  the 
event  in  any  case  portended  danger  for  the  United  States. 
"It  completely  reverses, "  wrote  Jefferson  to  Dupont  in  Paris, 
"all  the  political  relations  of  the  United  States,  and  will  form 
a  new  epoch  in  our  political  course.  .  .  .  There  is  on  the 
globe  one  single  spot,  the  possessor  of  which  is  our  natural 
and  habitual  enemy.  It  is  New  Orleans,  through  which  the 
produce  of  three-fourths  of  our  territory  must  pass  to  market." 
To  these  fears  succeeded  the  apprehension  that  England 
might  seize  Louisiana  herself  and  thus  unite  the  Gulf  and  the 
St.  Lawrence  by  means  of  the  Mississippi.  Nor  was  there 
much  doubt  in  Washington  that  the  attempt  of  either  France 
or  England  to  establish  a  new  empire  would  be  promptly 
followed  by  the  revolt  or  secession  of  the  settlers  in  the 
Mississippi  Valley  from  the  United  States  and  their  adhesion 
to  the  new  empire.  Too  many  pledges  of  their  readiness  to 
join  the  Spanish  had  already  been  given  to  cause  Jefferson 
to  hesitate  long.  The  crisis  was,  he  wrote,  "the  most  im 
portant  that  the  United  States  have  ever  met  since  their  in 
dependence  9  and  which  is  to  decide  their  future  character 
and  career."10  An  embassy  was  despatched  to  France  to 
purchase  enough  land  at  the  mouth  of  the  river  to  place  its 
navigation  definitely  in  the  control  of  the  United  States.11 
Napoleon,  however,  offered  to  sell  the  whole  tract,  moved  per 
haps  by  secret  information  of  Jefferson's  opinion  that  the  at 
tempt  of  France  to  use  that  land  must  force  the  United  States 
to  ally  with  England.  For  fifteen  millions  of  dollars,  Loui 
siana  was  sold.  "The  sale,"  said  Napoleon,  "assures  forever 
the  power  of  the  United  States  and  I  have  given  England  a 
rival  who  sooner  or  later  will  humble  her  pride."  "To-day," 
proudly  wrote  the  United  States  Minister  to  France,  "the 

»  Note  this  significant  use  of  the  plural. 
10  Writings  of  Jefferson,  Ford's  ed.,  VIII,  203;  209,  210. 
id.,  VIII,  206. 


THE  WAR  OF  1812  205 

United  States  take  their  place  among  the  powers  of  the  first 
rank."12 

The  immediate  effect  was  to  bring  to  an  abrupt  termina 
tion  the  plots  for  the  creation  of  revolutions  in  the  Missis 
sippi  Valley,  and  to  make  possible  the  settlement  of  the  diffi 
culties  with  England  without  risking  the  secession  of  the 
western  States  and  Territories.  The  victory  of  the  English 
over  the  French  and  Spanish  at  Trafalgar  in  1805,  the  al 
most  immediate  decision  to  enforce  strictly  the  prohibitions 
of  the  Navigation  Acts  and  to  stop  direct  trade  between  the 
West  Indies  and  Europe,  followed  by  the  war  of  decrees  in 
which  the  English  and  French  effectually  blockaded  all  trade 
throughout  the  world  so  far  as  paper  proclamations  could 
do  it,  all  forced  the  United  States  to  undertake  negotiations 
for  a  settlement.  How  hard-pressed  the  government  was  is 
clear  from  the  treaty  negotiated  with  England  in  December 
1806.  The  Americans  were  to  be  allowed  to  carry  goods  to 
Europe  from  the  West  Indies  by  paying  a  duty  upon  them 
to  England,  and,  unless  the  United  States  at  once  resisted  the 
measures  of  Napoleon,  the  treaty  would  be  void.  Jefferson  re 
jected  it  at  once.  Further  decrees  militating  against  Ameri 
can  trade  appeared  in  1807 ;  the  frigate  Chesapeake  was  fired 
upon  by  the  English  ship  Leopard  and  three  American  citi 
zens  and  one  English  subject  were  seized  from  her  crew. 
Congress  had  already  prohibited  the  importation  of  English 
goods  or  colonial  produce  after  certain  dates,  and  now  in  1807 
an  act  forbade  American  vessels  to  sail  for  foreign  ports. 
The  most  vehement  opposition  to  this  Embargo  at  once 
became  evident  in  New  England  and  most  shipping-centers; 
the  act  was  evaded  and  even  the  Enforcement  Act  of  the  next 
year  was  unavailing  to  do  more  than  cause  open  resistance  to 
Federal  authority  along  Lake  Champlain  and  the  proba 
bility  of  armed  revolt  in  New  England.  The  policy  was  ob 
viously  injuring  Americans  far  more  than  the  English  or 
French,  who  openly  exulted  over  the  folly  of  the  Embargo; 

12  Note  again  this  significant  use  of  the  plural  in  connection  with  the 
United  States. 


206  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

the  act  was  therefore  repealed.  After  a  long  series  of  fur 
ther  attempts  at  legislation  and  negotiation,  and  after  the  re 
ceipt  of  further  insults  from  the  English,  war  was  declared  in 
1812.13 

The  new  policy  was  the  result  of  the  passing  of  the  control 
to  a  new  set  of  political  leaders — Clay,  Calhoun,  and  later, 
Webster.  They  demanded  the  "extortion"  from  England  of 
favorable  terms;  the  "avenging"  of  the  slights  and  insults 
the  United  States  had  suffered;  the  conquest  of  Canada  and 
the  exclusion  of  the  English  from  the  continent.14  But,  with 
out  adequate  preparation  for  defense  or  offense  on  land, 
without  a  numerous  and  powerful  navy,  without  money  or  a 
definite  method  of  obtaining  it,  success  was  hardly  possible. 
Indeed,  the  same  factors  fought  for  us  and  against  us  as  in 
the  Revolution:  the  simple  difference  was  that  Washington 
and  Greene  had  understood  what  those  factors  were  and  had 
used  them  with  consummate  skill;  the  men  of  1812  seem 
hardly  to  have  been  conscious  of  their  existence.  The  dis 
tance  which  separated  us  from  England,  the  size  of  the 
theater  of  war,  which  had  made  it  impossible  for  her  to  con 
quer  us,  made  even  more  impossible  the  successful  prosecu 
tion  of  an  offensive  war  by  the  United  States  against  Eng 
land.  To  be  sure,  she  was  engaged  in  a  life  and  death  struggle 
with  Napoleon  and  could  hardly  spare  ships  and  armies 
to  fight  the  United  States  effectively  at  the  same  time.  If 
a  decisive  rapid  attack  could  have  been  delivered  upon 
Canada  by  a  large  and  really  efficient  army,  Canada  might 
have  been  conquered,  and  the  width  of  the  Atlantic  and  the 
wild  character  of  the  land  would  probably  have  prevented 
reconquest  by  England.  But  the  prime  cause  of  the  war  and 
its  only  justification  was  impressment,  the  right  of  search,  the 

is  Howe  wrote  to  Provost  in  1809:  "Mad  as  Parties  are  in  America, 
I  do  not  think  that  a  Majority  of  the  Population  wish  a  War  wilh 
Great  Britain.  The  warmest  among  them  will  frankly  own,  they  do 
not  see  any  benefit  they  could  obtain  by  it."  American  Historical  Re 
view,  XVII,  350. 

i*  See  in  particular  Clay's  speeches  during  the  session  of  1813.  An 
nals  of  Congress,  12  Congress,  2  session,  especially  pp.  667-676. 


THE  WAR  OF  1812  207 

attainment  of  commercial  privileges  in  Europe  and  in  the 
West  Indies,  the  recognition  of  American  ships  as  neutral 
carriers,  and  the  concession  of  a  privileged  status  to  all  neutral 
shipping.  The  conquest  of  Canada  and  the  destruction 
of  British  frigates  could  not  conceivably  put  sufficient  pres 
sure  on  England  to  compel  her  to  grant  these  demands  of  the 
United  States.  The  war  was  foredoomed  to  failure  and  the 
winning  of  a  few  brilliant  naval  victories  could  not  conclude 
the  issue  in  our  favor. 

It  was  even  more  definitely  decided  against  us  by  the  out 
break  of  "civil  war"  in  America.  Ever  since  it  had  become 
apparent  after  the  signing  of  the  Treaty  of  1783  that  the  com 
mercial  question  had  not  been  settled,  the  mercantile  com 
munity  and  New  England  as  a  whole  had  more  and  more  ve 
hemently  opposed  the  hostile  attitude  towards  England  as 
sumed  by  the  majority,  and  had  more  and  more  consistently 
declared  for  a  policy  of  conciliation  and  the  securing  of  such 
terms  as  could  be  had.  The  election  of  Jefferson  had  con 
vinced  the  Federalists  in  New  England  that  little  was  now 
to  be  expected  from  the  central  government  and  that  their 
dearest  hopes  and  most  important  interests  would  be  sacri 
ficed  to  the  clamor  of  the  mob.  The  purchase  of  Louisiana, 
the  rejection  of  the  various  treaties  framed  with  England 
between  1803  and  1812,  the  Embargo  and  non-intercourse 
legislation  convinced  them  as  the  years  went  on  that  their 
expectations  were  only  too  certainly  being  realized.  "We 
have  a  country  governed  by  blockheads  and  dunces,"  the 
brother  of  the  President  of  Yale  College  told  the  students; 
'  *  our  children  are  cast  into  the  world  from  the  breast  and  for 
gotten  ;  filial  piety  is  extinguished. ' ' 

"The  principles  of  our  Revolution,"  wrote  Pickering  to 
Cabot  in  1804,15  "point  to  a  remedy — a  separation.  .  .  . 
The  people  of  the  East  cannot  reconcile  their  habits,  views, 
and  interests  with  those  of  the  South  and  West.  ...  I  do  not 

!5  This  whole  subject  of  secession  and  nullification  in  New  England 
has  been  well  covered  by  Henry  Adams  in  Documents  Relating  to  New 
England  Federalism.  1800  to  1815.  Boston,  1877. 


208  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

believe  in  the  practicability  of  a  long  continued  union.  The 
Northern  Confederacy  would  unite  congenial  characters,  and 
present  a  fairer  prospect  of  public  happiness;  while  the 
Southern  States,  having  a  similarity  of  habits  might  be  left 
to  manage  their  affairs  in  their  own  way."  Not  only  did 
the  Federalists  not  believe  one  nation  desirable  or  possible; 
they  were  perfectly  sure  that  none  existed.  Indeed,  upon 
the  existence  of  three  nations  or  groups  of  interests,  they 
based  their  plans  and  by  this  "fact"  they  justified  their  pro 
posed  secession.  The  annexation  of  Louisiana  "was  oppress 
ive  to  the  interests  and  destructive  to  the  influence  of  the 
Northern  section  of  the  confederacy,"  wrote  John  Quincy 
Adams  describing  this  plan  years  later,  "whose  right  and 
duty  it  therefore  was  to  secede  from  the  new  body  politic 
and  to  constitute  one  of  their  own."  The  New  England 
States,  which  found  the  Union  very  much  to  their  interest  in 
1860,  quite  forgot  at  that  time  that  they  had  themselves  es 
poused  and  believed  constitutional  and  patriotic  the  same  ideas 
which  the  Southerners  were  then  promulgating. 

Hamilton's  decision  against  the  scheme,  the  discovery  that 
the  immediate  fears  concerning  the  shift  of  influence  to  the 
South  and  West  were  not  realized,  checked  the  secession  move 
ment  in  1804.  In  1807  and  1808,  the  disastrous  effect  of  the 
Embargo  on  New  England  revived  it ;  armed  rebellion  seemed 
almost  certain,  but  the  danger  was  averted  by  the  repeal  of 
the  act  and  by  the  expectation  of  relief  from  the  renewal  of 
trade.  When  war  was  declared  upon  England  in  1812,  New 
England  determined  to  wait  no  longer.  While  the  new  con 
federacy  was  being  organized  and  the  movements  concerted 
which  should  make  its  secession  final  and  successful,  passive 
resistance  of  the  old  colonial  type  was  offered  to  the  commands 
of  the  Federal  government.  The  New  Englanders  declined  to 
put  their  troops  under  command  of  United  States  officers,  re 
fused  to  allow  them  to  serve  outside  the  United  States  and 
in  some  cases  outside  their  own  borders.  In  all  these  States, 
loans  were  authorized  and  troops  equipped  for  their  own  de 
fense,  an  example  followed  in  1814  by  New  York,  Pennsyl- 


THE  WAR  OF  1812  208 

vania,  and  Virginia.  New  England  was  then  the  moneyed 
community  and  from  its  resources  the  Federal  government 
had  expected  to  finance  the  war.  The  New  Englanders  de 
clined  to  loan  money  to  the  government  and  instead  gave  aid 
and  comfort  to  the  enemies  of  the  United  States,  supplying  the 
English  fleets  and  armies  with  beef  and  fuel 16  and  even  with 
the  specie  to  pay  the  troops.17  At  the  crucial  moment  of  the 
war,  two  weeks  after  the  English  had  sacked  Washington,  one 
week  after  they  had  occupied  parts  of  Maine,  the  State  mili 
tia  of  Massachusetts,  70,000  well-equipped  and  drilled  men, 
was  withdrawn  from  the  armies  of  the  United  States.  Rhode 
Island  and  Connecticut  followed  suit  and  the  three  entered 
into  bonds  for  mutual  defense.  Meanwhile,  behind  closed 
doors,  the  Hartford  Convention  was  elaborating  a  new  con 
stitution  and  concerting  measures  for  the  independence  of  the 
New  England  States.  The  "civil  war"  in  America  was  not 
yet  over ;  the  anti-national  feeling  was  yet  strong ;  the  vision 
of  a  single  nation  was  as  yet  seen  only  by  a  few  individuals ; 
but  a  great  advance  had  been  made  towards  nationalism.  The 
old  talk  of  the  necessity  of  the  independence  and  sovereignty 
of  each  separate  State  had  disappeared;  the  thirteen  sover 
eigns  had  been  reduced  to  three — the  East,  the  South,  and 
the  West.  The  development  of  the  country  and  propinquity 
were  doing  their  work  slowly  but  surely. 

The  seriousness  of  this  crisis  has  not  been  fully  enough 
recognized.  For  some  weeks,  the  fate  of  the  union  hung  in 
the  balance,  for  not  only  was  New  England  clearly  ready  to 
secede,  but  there  were  grave  fears  in  Washington  that  the 
Mississippi  Valley  would  either  attempt  to  secede  or  would 
offer  its  allegiance  to  England,  fears  which  found  ample  con- 
is  "Supplies  of  the  most  essential  kinds  find  their  way  not  only  to 
British  ports  and  British  armies  at  a  distance,  but  the  armies  in  our 
neighborhood  with  which  our  own  are  contending,  derive  from  our 
ports  and  outlets  a  subsistence  attainable  with  difficulty,  if  at  all,  from 
other  sources.'*  Madison,  Special  Message  to  Congress,  Dec.  9,  1813. 
Richardson,  Messages  and  Papers  of  the  Presidents,  I,  540-1. 

IT  So  the  British  authorities  in  Canada  reported  to  England.  See  the 
quotations  from  manuscripts  in  the  Canadian  Archives  in  Henry  Adams, 
History  of  the  United  States,  VII,  146. 


210  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

firmation  in  the  news  that  an  English  army  had  been  des 
patched  to  New  Orleans.18  There  could  scarcely  be  any 
other  reason  for  such  an  expedition  than  the  expectation  of 
winning  a  great  domain  with  the  assistance  of  the  inhabitants. 
The  fate  of  the  United  States  was  at  stake  in  the  winter  of 
1814  and  1815;  the  anti-nationalist  movement  seemed  this 
time  certain  of  success  and  the  creation  of  two  new  confed 
eracies  more  than  probable.  At  the  critical  moment  came  the 
news  of  the  signing  of  the  Peace  of  Ghent  with  England  and 
of  the  victory  of  Jackson  over  the  English  at  New  Orleans. 
The  rejoicing  was  extreme,  not  in  the  least  because  the  Treaty 
of  Peace  accorded  us  the  favorable  terms  which  the  war  had 
been  undertaken  to  extort,  but  because  the  sectional  strife  in 
America  had  been  decided  in  favor  of  the  Federal  govern 
ment.19  The  rebellions  had  been  crushed  without  actual  war 
fare;  the  union  had  been  preserved  without  the  memory  of 
deadly  combat  to  stand  in  the  way  of  reconciliation.  The 
Hartford  Convention  dissolved;  the  talk  of  secession  died  a 
natural  death ;  New  England  and  the  West  tried  to  act  as  if 
nothing  had  been  intended,  and  the  various  parties  and  in 
terests  returned  to  Congress  to  debate  the  common  problems. 
Nothing  had  been  settled;  the  cause  of  dissidence  was  still 
present ;  but  for  the  moment  the  solution  by  force  or  by  seces 
sion  was  definitely  abandoned  by  every  one.  When  it  was 
next  mooted,  the  development  of  the  country  had  transferred 
the  seat  of  discontent  to  the  South. 

is  Howe  found  in  1809  that  "Great  apprehensions  are  excited  for  the 
Safety  of  Louisiana.  A  part  of  the  new  Levee  of  6000  men  has  been 
sent  to  that  Quarter."  American  Historical  Review,  XVII,  349. 

is  So  great  was  the  anxiety  in  1808  that  Howe  concluded  that  the 
Federal  government  would  declare  war  with  England  as  a  last  desperate 
expedient  for  holding  the  union  together.  "And  if  our  Government 
[the  British]  should  not  be  disposed  to  let  them  out  of  their  own  Trap 
[the  Embargo],  and  the  Government  of  America  should  continue  their 
present  system,  not  a  doubt  can  be  entertained,  but  that  a  separation 
of  the  Eastern  States  will  ensue.  If  the  answer  of  our  Government 
should  not  meet  the  wishes  of  the  ruling  Party,  they  will  then  endeavor 
to  preserve  the  Union  by  plunging  the  Country  into  a  War  with  Great 
Britain,  in  hopes  that  a  sense  of  common  danger,  will  excite  a  unanim 
ity,  they  will  have  no  other  means  of  effecting."  Ibid. 


XVI 
"THE  AMERICAN  SYSTEM" 

THE  "War  of  1812  scarcely  improved  the  commercial  rela 
tions  of  the  United  States  with  Europe,  but  it  had  a  profound 
influence  on  our  history  because  it  gave  American  statesmen 
for  the  first  time  a  clear  conception  of  the  fact  that  our 
fundamental  difficulties  were  economic  and  not  political  or 
administrative,  issues  to  be  solved  by  the  plow  and  the  loom 
rather  than  by  the  sword.  The  end  of  the  war  in  1815 
happened  practically  to  coincide  with  the  close  of  the  Na 
poleonic  wars  in  Europe  and  the  natural  resumption  of  peace 
ful  pursuits  on  the  continent.  Thus  disappeared,  in  a  mo 
ment,  as  it  were,  the  market  for  American  food-stuffs  and 
naval  stores  and  the  opportunity  for  American  ships  in  the 
carrying  trade.  Great  as  had  been  the  dangers  and  serious 
as  had  been  the  obstacles  in  the  way  of  the  complete  utiliza 
tion  of  the  opportunity  by  Americans,  many  fortunes  had 
been  built  upon  it  and  a  really  flourishing  mercantile  marine 
had  been  developed.  The  resumption  of  manufactures  on  the 
continent  was  a  great  blow  to  the  English  manufacturers, 
whose  business  had  flourished,  not  only  because  of  the  In 
dustrial  Revolution  and  the  use  of  the  new  machinery,  but 
also  because  the  state  of  war  had  left  them  the  only  manu 
facturers  in  Europe,  and  had  given  them,  despite  the  mili 
tating  regulations  of  Napoleon,  almost  a  monopoly  of  the 
European  market.  With  the  return  of  peace,  their  market 
largely  disappeared,  a  large  surplusage  of  production  resulted, 
prices  accordingly  fell  rapidly,  and  English  goods  at  low  rates 
flooded  the  American  market.  The  disappearance  of  our  mar 
ket  abroad  both  during  the  continuance  of  the  Embargo  and 
after  the  close  of  the  war  left  the  American  merchants  with 

211 


212  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

a  large  variety  of  produce  which  they  could  not  sell  and  re 
vealed  to  the  eyes  of  even  the  blindest  the  fact  that  there  was 
no  home  market  for  what  we  produced.  The  flood  of  English 
manufactured  goods  and  the  practical  lack  of  anything  else 
on  the  American  market  made  it  equally  clear  that  we  did 
not  produce  much  of  anything  which  we  ourselves  needed. 
We  were  utterly  dependent  upon  Europe  to  buy  what  we  had 
to  sell  and  to  produce  for  us  what  we  wished  to  buy.  And 
Europe  was  three  thousand  miles  away  and  was  subject  to 
wars  and  commercial  crises! 

The  period,  which  began  with  the  institution  of  the  Fed 
eral  government  in  1789  and  closed  with  the  War  of  1812, 
had  been  one  of  unusually  rapid  economic  development  in 
America,  and  had  produced  an  entirely  new  alignment  of  in 
terests  in  the  country.  A  distinct  entity  had  begun  to  form 
in  the  South  concerned  with  the  growing  of  cotton,  another 
in  the  North  chiefly  busied  with  the  manufacture  of  cotton 
cloth,  and  a  third  to  the  West  intent  upon  the  conquest  of  the 
wilderness  by  the  plow  as  rapidly  as  possible. 

Cotton  had  been  found  by  Columbus  and  had  been  used  by 
the  early  colonists  sufficiently  to  cause  it  to  be  enumerated 
by  the  Navigation  Act  in  1660  as  a  marketable  commodity, 
but  it  had  never  rivaled  tobacco,  indigo,  or  rice  as  a  great 
staple  crop.  A  great  variety  of  circumstances,  juxtaposited 
by  chance,  united  to  make  it  the  long-sought  medium  of  ex 
change  between  America  and  Europe,  the  valuable  commodity 
the  demand  for  which  in  Europe  should  increase  as  fast  as 
the  ability  of  America  to  increase  its  rate  of  production.  The 
pre-revolutionary  non-importation  agreements  and  the  attempt 
to  find  a  substitute  for  woolens  first  called  attention  to  it. 
Then  came  the  invention  in  England  of  machinery  for  spinning 
and  weaving  cotton;  and  the  accident  of  fashion  created  a 
demand  for  the  new  cloth.  At  or  about  the  same  time  (1786), 
the  first  crop  of  the  sea-island  cotton,  grown  near  Charleston, 
B.  C.,  was  marketed,  and  the  extraordinary  length  and  the 
soft  and  silky  quality  of  its  fiber  was  first  appreciated.  It  met 
at  once  with  favor  and  within  a  few  years  was  selling  for  a 


"THE  AMERICAN  SYSTEM"  213 

dollar  and  even  two  dollars  a  pound.  Cotton  came  as  a  god 
send  to  the  South.  The  Southerners  were  seeking  a  new  staple 
crop,  for  the  indigo  industry  had  depended  on  the  English 
bounty  for  its  profit  and  had  therefore  been  ruined  by  its 
discontinuance  in  1775.  The  rice-cultivation  was  limited  to 
the  swamp  lands  of  South.  Carolina  and  Georgia ;  and  the  Eu 
ropean  demand  for  American  tobacco  was  always  distinctly 
limited,  since  America  did  not  produce  the  finest  grades.  Cot 
ton  therefore  promptly  attracted  attention  and  was  tried  in 
many  districts,  and  just  as  the  planters  had  found  that  the 
upland  cotton  was  filled  with  seeds  so  difficult  to  remove  that 
the  process  destroyed  both  fiber  and  profit  (the  sea-island  cot 
ton  was  easy  to  clean),  Eli  Whitney  invented  a  simple  ma 
chine  with  which  even  an  ignorant  slave  could  rapidly  cleanse 
huge  amounts  from  seeds.  The  European  demand,  the  new 
machinery  to  use  the  fiber,  the  gin  to  clean  it,  the  need  for 
a  new  Southern  staple  crop,  all  combined  to  make  cotton 
within  twenty  years  the  greatest  asset  the  South  had  and  the 
most  important  single  product  of  the  Atlantic  coast.  9,000 
bales  were  produced  in  1791;  211,000  were  grown  in  1801; 
and  at  the  close  of  the  war  of  1812,  458,000. 

Cotton  made  slavery  profitable  and  therefore  permanent. 
In  1789,  it  had  been  the  rather  general  sentiment  that  slav 
ery  was  likely  to  die  of  inanition  and  that  its  extension  was 
hardly  likely.  In  1815,  it  was  beyond  question  that  a  great 
and  a  permanent  interest  of  the  South  had  appeared  which 
it  did  not  share  with  other  sections  of  the  country. 

As  definite  an  interest,  and  one  as  obviously  local,  had  ap 
peared  in  New  England  and  in  the  middle  States.  The  Em 
bargo,  followed  by  the  War  of  1812,  had  compelled  America 
to  do  without  English  goods  and  the  high  prices  manufactured 
goods  commanded  had  stimulated  the  production  at  home  of 
cotton  and  woolen  cloth,  some  pig-iron,  glass,  pottery,  and  a 
few  other  articles.  Of  all  these  industries  " created"  by  the 
war,  the  most  successful  was  cotton-spinning.  In  1805,  4,500 
spindles  were  at  work;  the  imposition  of  the  Embargo  raised 
the  number  to  31,000  in  1809  and  to  87,000  in  1810,  while 


214  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

the  war  resulted  in  an  expansion  to  130,000  spindles.  Where 
1,000  bales  of  raw  cotton  had  been  used  in  1805,  90,000  bales 
were  being  consumed  in  1815.  Slater  at  Pawtucket  had  in 
troduced  the  new  English  machinery  for  spinning,  and  Lowell 
had  instituted  near  Boston,  in  some  of  the  first  true  factories 
in  the  world,  power  looms  for  weaving  cotton  cloth.  All 
through  New  England,  abundant  water-power  and  unremu- 
nerative  agriculture  produced  conditions  favorable  for  manu 
factures.  The  new  industries  spread  rapidly.  Apparently 
the  war  had  created  industries  and  a  new  sectional  interest 
as  definite  in  its  needs  as  the  "peculiar  institution "  in  the 
South. 

Moreover,  a  third  section  had  grown  over  night,  as  it  were, 
in  the  Mississippi  Valley.  By  1815,  on  the  great  prairies 
where  the  Iroquois  had  so  long  hunted,  where  in  1783  had 
been  only  a  few  scattered  hamlets  and  a  few  daredevil  ad 
venturers,  were  four  fully  organized  States,  Kentucky,  Ten 
nessee,  Ohio,  Louisiana,  and  five  territories  nearly  populous 
enough  for  admission  as  States.  The  band  of  settlement  had 
spread  westward  from  the  Hudson  and  Mohawk  Valleys  into 
the  old  Northwest  Territory,  from  Virginia  and  North  Caro 
lina  through  the  Cumberland  Gap  into  Kentucky,  Tennessee, 
Missouri,  southern  Illinois  and  Indiana,  and  west  from 
Georgia  and  South  Carolina  into  the  rich  river-bottoms  of 
the  Gulf  country  where  cotton  was  most  profitable.  This 
last  section  became  soon  an  integral  part  of  the  South,  bound 
to  it  by  an  identity  of  interests,  but  the  more  northern  dis 
tricts  found  themselves  above  the  cotton-belt  and  west  of 
the  mountains,  shut  off  in  the  great  river  valley  with  char 
acteristic  problems  of  their  own.  The  provision  of  adequate 
facilities  of  transportation  by  means  of  roads,  canals,  turn 
pikes,  was  seen  at  a  very  early  date  to  be  the  most  difficult 
problem,  upon  whose  solution  rested  the  possibility  of  an  im 
mediate  development  and  utilization  of  the  land.  Unless  the 
crop  could  be  moved  south  or  east,  there  was  no  purpose 
in  raising  more  than  the  individual  needed  for  his  own 
sustenance.  But  the  crop  could  not  be  moved  and  exchanged 


"THE  AMERICAN  SYSTEM"  215 

for  manufactured  goods  without  money,  and  of  that  the 
West  had  little  and  was  never  able  to  retain  for  long  what 
little  it  did  obtain.  Compared  to  these,  the  more  immediate 
problems  of  the  division  and  allotment  of  land,  the  institu 
tion  of  administration,  the  taxation  of  undeveloped  land, 
the  provision  for  schools  and  universities  were  simple  and 
were  rapidly  and  on  the  whole  admirably  dealt  with. 

The  net  result,  however,  was  the  creation  of  three  distinct 
and  varying  interests.  Calhoun  in  an  interview  with  Ham 
mond  in  1831  thus  accurately  described  the  situation.  "He 
then  spoke  of  the  three  great  interests  of  the  Nation,  the 
North,  the  South,  and  the  West.  They  had  been  struggling 
in  a  fierce  war  with  each  other,  and  he  thought  the  period 
was  approaching  that  was  to  determine  whether  they  could 
be  reconciled  or  not  so  as  to  perpetuate  the  Union.  He  was 
of  the  opinion  that  they  could.  The  interest  of  the  North 
was  a  manufacturing  and  protecting  one,  that  of  the  South, 
Free  Trade,  and  that  of  the  West  was  involved  in  the  distri 
bution  of  the  lands  and  Internal  Improvements."  This 
"fierce  war"  of  which  Calhoun  spoke  occupied  the  period 
from  1815  to  1840  to  the  practical  exclusion  of  every  other 
subject  and  to  some  extent  has  persisted  throughout  American 
history  and  is  still  of  consequence.  In  this  guise,  the  civil 
strife  in  America  went  on. 

The  great  influx  of  English  manufactured  goods,  which 
poured  into  the  country  in  1815  and  1816,  drove  the  American 
cotton  and  woolen  goods  off  the  market.  Under  any  circum 
stances,  the  new  factories  could  scarcely  expect  to  produce 
as  cheaply  as  the  English  merchants  could  export  goods,  and 
certainly  were  helpless  in  competition  with  English  goods 
sold  actually  at  a  sacrifice  because  of  the  overproduction. 
The  cry  went  up  from  the  new  manufacturers:  having  cre 
ated  us  by  the  Embargo  and  the  war,  you  must  now  pro 
tect  our  infant  industries.  The  logic  of  facts  seemed  un 
deniable.  Before  the  war,  no  manufactures;  after  the  war, 
flourishing  industries;  the  Embargo  and  the  war  had  been 
equivalent  to  a  protection  of  100% ;  therefore  protection 


216  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

could  create  industries,  and  by  protective  tariffs  American 
industries  could  be  enabled  to  compete  successfully  with  un 
derpaid  foreign  labor.  The  argument  of  course  was  applied 
to  the  encouragement  of  industries,  necessary  to  the  country, 
sure  to  be  profitable  if  started,  but  whose  rise  was  prevented 
by  superficial  and  artificial  difficulties  of  a  nature  to  be  readily 
overcome  by  the  imposition  of  a  duty  on  the  foreign  prod 
uct  equivalent  to  the  difference  between  the  cost  of  manu 
facture  in  America  and  that  in  Europe  plus  the  cost  of 
freight.  The  essential  point  is  that  no  permanent  causes 
hindered  the  development  of  the  industry,  though  it  is  only 
fair  to  add  that  the  enthusiastic  supporters  of  the  tariff 
scouted  the  notion  that  there  was  an  industry  which  could 
not  profitably  be  pursued  in  the  United  States. 

A  low  tariff  had  been  imposed  in  1789  and  had  proved  its 
value  as  a  money-getter  by  providing  a  sufficient  revenue 
to  meet  the  expenses  of  the  new  administration.  Indeed, 
previous  to  1860,  the  tariff  provided  nearly  the  whole  Federal 
revenue.  In  1816,  a  tariff  was  imposed,  however,  with  the 
intention  of  protecting  the  new  manufactures;  the  duties 
were  all  raised  and  new  duties  on  textiles  were  imposed, 
amounting  to  about  twenty  or  twenty-five  per  cent  of  the 
value  of  the  article.  An  agitation  against  the  high  tariff 
was  at  once  begun  in  the  South  and  in  many  of  the  interior 
districts,  which  had  depended  entirely  on  Europe  for  manu 
factured  goods  and  which  still  depended  on  finding  a  market 
abroad  for  the  great  staples,  tobacco,  cotton,  and  rice.  To 
their  thinking,  the  new  scheme  was  intended  to  force  them 
to  pay  for  the  development  of  manufactures  in  the  East,  to 
compel  them  to  renounce  their  own  particular  interest,  which 
lay  of  course  in  complete  freedom  of  trade,  and  particularly 
in  the  ability  to  bring  back  into  the  country  as  large  an 
amount  of  goods  as  possible  in  return  for  the  product  they 
exported.  This  they  complained  was  unfair;  the  interest  of 
one  section  was  favored  at  the  expense  of  the  interest  of 
another. 

In  1820  and  in  1824,  Clay  and  others  fought  valiantly 


"THE  AMERICAN  SYSTEM"  217 

for  "the  American  system."  of  encouraging  home  manu 
factures,  and  in  the  end  their  logic  won  the  day.  "We 
have  shaped  our  industry,  our  navigation,  our  commerce, " 
Clay  told  the  House  in  1824,1  "in  reference  to  an  extraordi 
nary  war  in  Europe,  and  to  foreign  markets  which  no  longer 
exist.  .  .  .  Whilst  we  have  cultivated  with  assiduous  care  our 
foreign  resources,  we  have  suffered  those  at  home  to  wither 
in  a  state  of  neglect  and  abandonment."  "We  have  seen 
that  our  exclusive  dependence  upon  the  foreign  market  must 
lead  to  still  severer  distress,  to  impoverishment,  to  ruin.  We 
must  give  a  new  direction  to  some  portion  of  our  industry. 
We  must  speedily  adopt  a  genuine  American  policy.  Still 
cherishing  the  foreign  market,  let  us  create  also  a  home 
market,  to  give  further  scope  to  the  consumption  of  the 
produce  of  American  industry.  Let  us  counteract  the  policy 
of  foreigners,  and  withdraw  the  support  which  we  now  give 
to  their  industry,  and  stimulate  that  of  our  own  country.  .  .  . 
The  creation  of  a  home  market  is  not  only  necessary  to 
procure  for  our  agriculture  a  just  reward  for  its  labors,  but 
it  is  indispensable  to  obtain  a  supply  of  our  necessary  wants. 
If  we  cannot  sell,  we  cannot  buy.  .  .  .  We  must  naturalize 
the  arts  in  our  country  ...  by  adequate  protection  against 
the  otherwise  overwhelming  influence  of  foreigners." 

That  the  protective  tariff  was  likely  to  burden  the  South 
and  West,  Clay  clearly  appreciated  and  a  distinctive  part  of 
the  "American  system"  was  the  open  recognition  of  the 
necessity  of  protecting  the  special  interests  of  all  three  sec 
tions.  "Now  our  people,"  he  declared,  "present  the  spec 
tacle  of  a  vast  assemblage  of  jealous  rivals,  all  eagerly  rush 
ing  to  the  seaboard,  jostling  each  other  in  their  way,  to 
hurry  off  to  glutted  foreign  markets  the  perishable  produce 
of  their  labor.  The  tendency  of  that  policy,  in  conformity 
to  which  this  bill  is  prepared,  is  to  transform  these  competi 
tors  into  friends  and  mutual  customers,  and,  by  the  reciprocal 
exchange  of  their  respective  productions,  to  place  the  con- 

i  This  and  other  valuable  papers  and  speeches  on  the  tariff  will  be 
conveniently  found  in  Taussig's  State  Papers  and  Speeches  on  the  Tariff. 


218  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

federacy  upon  the  most  solid  of  all  foundations,  the  basis 
of  common  interest. "  "  Our  confederacy  comprehends  within 
its  vast  limits  great  diversity  of  interests,  agricultural,  plant 
ing,  farming,  commercial,  navigating,  fishing,  manufactur 
ing.  No  one  of  these  interests  is  felt  in  the  same  degree 
and  cherished  with  the  same  solicitude  throughout  all  parts 
of  the  Union.  Some  of  them  are  peculiar  to  particular  sec 
tions  of  our  common  country.  .  .  .  Here,  then,  is  a  case  for 
mutual  concession,  for  fair  compromise.  ...  It  sacrifices  the 
interest  of  neither  section  to  that  of  the  other;  neither,  it 
is  true,  gets  all  that  it  wants,  nor  is  subject  to  all  that  it 
fears." 

The  peculiar  interest  of  the  South  had  already  been  a 
subject  of  great  concern  and  recognition  of  its  seriousness 
had  already  been  ample.  Profit  from  cotton  cultivation  was 
even  thus  early  seen  to  depend  upon  the  ability  of  the  planter 
to  shift  his  slaves  from  the  fields  partially  exhausted  by 
successive  crops  to  new  virgin  soil  where  the  proportionate 
return  for  the  labor  was  enormously  greater.  So  great  was 
it,  that  the  Southerners  regarded  in  the  light  of  a  calamity 
the  arrival  of  the  day  when  the  supply  of  virgin  land  should 
be  exhausted  and  the  cotton-culture  should  be  forced  to  be 
come  intensive  instead  of  extensive.  By  1819,  the  whole  of 
the  land  east  of  the  Mississippi  available  for  cotton  had  al 
ready  been  settled  sufficiently  to  be  divided  into  States  and 
admitted  to  the  Union.  The  resort  thither  of  planters  was 
seen  to  be  progressing  at  a  rate  which  would  within  a  decade 
or  two  exhaust  the  supply  of  the  very  best  land.  West  of  the 
river  in  the  great  domain  of  Louisiana,  the  southern  corner 
had  early  been  settled  and  admitted  to  the  Union,  and  now 
in  1819  a  second  great  State,  Missouri,  was  knocking  for 
admission. 

The  question  of  the  extension  of  slavery  was  not  at  the 
time,  however,  of  as  momentous  consequence  as  the  preser 
vation  of  the  balance  of  power  between  the  particular  interests 
in  Congress.  The  House,  whose  members  were  proportioned 
among  the  States  according  to  population,  was  already  con- 


"THE  AMERICAN  SYSTEM"  219 

trolled  by  the  States  which  found  staple  crops  unprofitable 
and  which  could  therefore  not  be  expected  to  defend  either 
free  trade  or  slavery.  In  the  Senate,  where  the  States  were 
each  represented  by  two  members,  the  balance  between  the 
slave  and  free  States  were  exactly  even,  and  had  always 
been  so,  due  to  the  admission  of  the  new  States  in  pairs,  one 
free  and  one  slave.  Now  Maine  and  Missouri  had  both  ap 
plied  for  admission,  and,  should  both  be  admitted  as  free 
States,  the  South  would  at  once  be  in  the  minority  and 
the  sacrifice  of  its  agricultural  interests  to  the  manufactures 
of  the  East  seemed  to  be  an  almost  certain  result  of  the 
loss  of  political  equality.2  The  difficulty  was  frankly  recog 
nized;  the  right  of  the  South  to  sufficient  power  to  protect 
itself,  conceded.  But  the  principle  itself — that  the  interests 
of  the  three  sections  of  the  country  were  mutually  antag 
onistic,  and  destructive  of  each  other,  and  that  only  a  balance 
of  power  between  them  in  the  national  government  could 

2  This  was  a  notion  long  familiar  and  had  been  stated  in  1811  with 
great  force  and  clarity  by  Josiah  Quincy  of  Massachusetts  in  a  notable 
speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives.  The  admission  of  Louisiana 
would  be,  he  claimed,  "nothing  less  than  [the  exercise  of]  a  power, 
changing  all  the  proportions  of  the  weight  and  influence  possessed  by 
the  potent  sovereignties  composing  this  Union.  [Note  this  acceptance 
of  States'  sovereignty  by  a  Massachusetts  man.]  .  .  .  This  is  not  so 
much  a  question  concerning  the  exercise  of  sovereignty,  as  it  is  who 
shall  be  sovereign.  .  .  .  The  Proportion  of  the  political  weight  of  each 
sovereign  State,  constituting  this  union  depends  upon  the  number  of 
the  States,  which  have  a  voice  under  the  compact.  [Hayne  used  this 
same  word  to  designate  the  Constitution  in  1830.]  ...  I  hold  my  life, 
liberty  and  property,  ...  by  a  better  tenure  than  any  this  national 
government  can  give.  .  .  .  We  hold  these  by  the  laws,  customs,  and 
principles  of  the  commonwealth  of  Massachusetts.  Behind  her  ample 
shield,  we  find  refuge  and  feel  safety.  .  .  .  With  respect  to  this  love 
of  our  union,  concerning  which  so  much  sensibility  is  expressed,  I  have 
no  fear  about  analyzing  its  nature.  There  is  in  it  nothing  of  mystery. 
...  I  confess  it,  the  first  public  love  of  my  heart  is  the  Commonwealth 
of  Massachusetts.  There  is  my  fireside;  there  are  the  tombs  of  my 
ancestors.  .  .  .  The  love  of  this  union  grows  out  of  this  attachment  to 
my  native  soil  and  is  rooted  in  it.  I  cherish  it  because  it  affords  the 
best  external  hope  of  her  peace,  her  prosperity,  her  independence." 
This  will  be  destroyed  when  the  western  States  are  admitted,  for  they 
will  outnumber  the  original  States.  Hart,  Contemporaries,  III,  410-414. 


220  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

preserve  the  Union — was  felt  to  be  fraught  with  the  greatest 
danger  for  the  welfare  of  all.  That  the  question  should  be 
not  simply  an  issue  of  morals  or  of  rival  institutions  but 
of  the  political  power  of  great  sections  of  the  country  whose 
interests  seemed  to  be  and  certainly  were  assumed  to  be 
irreconcilable,  was  seen  to  contain  possibilities  which  caused 
all  to  fear  for  the  future.  "The  words  civil  war  and  dis 
union  are  uttered  almost  without  emotion,"  wrote  Clay,3 
while  Cobb  of  Georgia  predicted  that  the  Northern  men 
had  "kindled  a  fire  which  all  the  waters  of  the  ocean  cannot 
put  out,  which  seas  of  blood  only  can  extinguish. ' ' 4  Clay 
even  predicted  the  establishment  of  new  confederacies,  while 
John  Quincy  Adams  entrusted  to  his  diary  thoughts  regard 
ing  the  desirability  of  dissolving  the  union  and  reorganiz 
ing  it  "on  the  fundamental  principle  of  emancipation."  As 
to  civil  war,  he  went  on,  "so  glorious  would  be  its  final 
issue,  that  as  God  shall  judge  me,  I  do  not  say  that  it  is 
not  to  be  desired. ' ' 6  Almost  calmly,  Northern  and  South 
ern  men  considered  the  dissolution  of  the  "confederacy" 
and  decided  that  end  not  undesirable.  Not  yet  was  there 
anything  approaching  an  agreement  that  the  existence  of 
one  government,  of  one  nation  composed  of  all  the  individuals 
in  America,  either  existed  or  could  exist  or  ought  to  exist. 
The  loyalty  of  men  to  their  States  had  been  transferred 
to  their  sections ;  it  was  yet  to  be  transformed  into  allegiance 
to  the  country  as  a  whole. 

The  difficulty  was  compromised  in  1820  by  the  admission 
of  Maine  as  a  free  State,  of  Missouri  as  a  slave  State,  and  by 
the  division  of  the  Louisiana  Purchase  into  two  zones,  one, 
north  of  36°  30',  which  should  be  free  territory,  and  one 
south  of  that  line  which  should  be  slave  territory. 

The  West  had  yet  to  receive  its  share  of  the  compromise 
and  clamored  for  Internal  Improvements.  In  1808,  Gal- 

s  Private  Correspondence,  61. 
*  Annals  of  Congress,  15  Cong.,  2  Sess.,  I,  1204. 

a  Memoirs,  IV,  531.  Sea  also  Writings  of  Jefferson,  Ford's  «d.,  X, 
1*7. 


"THE  AMERICAN  SYSTEM"  221 

latin,  whose  financial  ability  had  gone  far  to  make  the  Anti- 
Federalist  regime  successful,  recommended  a  Federal  system 
of  roads  and  canals  to  open  up  the  great  areas  in  the  Mis 
sissippi  Valley.  These  would  obviously  be  of  great  value  if 
proper  facilities  of  transportation  could  be  provided.  As 
yet,  however,  their  inhabitants  did  not  themselves  possess 
sufficient  capital  to  promote  so  costly  an  undertaking.  The 
benefit  would  really  redound  to  the  country  as  a  whole  and 
furnished  reason  for  the  adoption  of  a  policy  of  Internal 
Improvements  by  the  Federal  government.  To  the  declar 
ation  that  sufficient  powers  were  not  vested  in  Congress  by 
the  Constitution,  answer  was  made  that  the  right  to  charter 
a  bank  and  to  purchase  Louisiana  were  not  explicitly  men 
tioned  either.  There  was  a  general  feeling  that  the  develop 
ment  of  the  Southwest  and  of  the  Ohio  Valley  by  Federal 
money  would  be  a  discrimination  in  favor  of  those  States 
against  the  East;  but  to  prove  that  roads  and  canals  were 
necessary  was  to  establish,  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  western 
men,  the  constitutionality  of  the  power  to  build  them.  Was 
the  Constitution  made  only  for  the  eastern  States?  In  1817 
and  1818,  projects  were  introduced  in  Congress  by  Calhoun 
and  Clay  for  a  comprehensive  system  of  internal  improve 
ments  and  in  1818  the  national  road  from  Cumberland  on 
the  Potomac  to  Wheeling  was  finished;  but  nothing  further 
was  done  till  1825,  when  Adams  approved  of  a  broad  project 
and  over  two  millions  of  dollars  were  voted  for  the  building 
of  roads  in  the  West.  A  plan  was  also  mooted  to  distribute 
the  lands  reserved  to  the  Federal  government  in  the  western 
States  to  settlers  at  fifty  cents  an  acre  instead  of  the  rate 
of  two  dollars  and  a  half  already  established. 

The  appropriation  of  money  for  internal  improvements 
and  the  tariff  of  1828,  which  raised  the  duties  so  much  that 
it  was  promptly  dubbed  the  Tariff  of  Abominations,  roused 
the  South  to  indignation.  Calhoun  became  spokesman  and 
in  his  "Exposition"  tried  to  demonstrate  that  the  tariff 
and  the  internal  improvements  were  responsible  for  the  low 
price  of  cotton  and  the  high  price  of  other  commodities.  The 


222  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

tariff  stole  the  profit  of  the  cotton-crop  by  compelling  the 
planters  to  pay  a  duty  on  the  goods  they  bought  with  the 
proceeds  abroad ;  the  indirect  taxes  of  the  government  further 
depleted  their  incomes  to  furnish  the  money  to  build  roads 
in  the  West.  The  attempt  of  the  government  to  foster  the 
interests  of  the  other  sections  was  injurious  to  the  South. 
In  South  Carolina  plans  were  made  to  "nullify"  the  ob 
noxious  Federal  laws  by  an  appeal  to  the  reserved  powers 
of  a  sovereign  State. 

In  reality,  the  general  commercial  crisis  of  the  period  fol 
lowing  the  close  of  the  Napoleonic  wars  was  the  cause  of 
most  of  the  difficulties  in  the  South.  The  demand  for  cot 
ton  in  Europe  was  not  as  great  as  before  because  the  overpro 
duction  of  the  earlier  years  had  been  succeeded  by  retrench 
ment;  the  production  of  cotton  at  the  South  had  however 
increased  by  leaps  and  bounds  and  the  supply  was  there 
fore  greater,  though  the  demand  was  smaller;  a  great  drop 
in  price  was  inevitable.  On  the  other  hand,  manufactured 
goods  had  been  abnormally  cheap  in  the  South  because  of 
the  overproduction  in  England,  the  resumption  of  manu 
facture  in  Europe,  and  the  growth  of  industries  in  New 
England.  The  supply  in  this  direction  had  far  exceeded 
the  demand  and  had  consequently  reduced  prices.  The  re 
duction  of  the  output  in  Europe  necessary  to  restore  the 
normal  balance  between  the  demand  and  the  supply  had 
begun,  however,  by  the  time  the  tariff  of  1824  was  passed; 
had  raised  the  prices  on  manufactured  goods  considerably, 
and  the  increase  was  of  course  attributed  by  the  South  en 
tirely  to  the  tariff,  whose  avowed  purpose  had  been  to  in 
crease  the  price  of  foreign  goods  in  America.  Furthermore, 
in  the  States  just  north  of  the  cotton-belt,  in  the  tobacco- 
belt,  the  border  States,  as  they  came  to  be  called,  Virginia, 
Maryland,  Kentucky,  Tennessee,  and  Missouri,  slavery  was  no 
longer  as  profitable  as  it  had  once  been,  and  the  commercial 
crisis  had  accentuated  the  planters'  troubles  until  plans  were 
actually  proposed  in  Virginia  for  the  purchase  and  deportation 
to  Africa  of  the  surplusage  of  slaves. 


"THE  AMERICAN  SYSTEM"  223 

To  the  excited  Southerners,  the  union,  the  existence  of  the 
Federal  government,  seemed  solely  responsible  for  their  ills. 
Did  it  not  allow  the  North  and  West  to  pass  the  tariff? 
Did  not  the  Constitution  recognize  and  legalize  this  sacrifice 
of  the  interests  of  a  part  and  that  too  without  possibility 
of  immediate  redress  by  legislative  methods?  Of  what  value 
was  such  a  union?  "I  consider  the  Constitution  a  dead 
letter,"  declared  John  Randolph. in  the  House  of  Represent 
atives  in  1824.  "I  have  no  faith  in  parchment,  sir.  ...  If 
you  draw  the  last  shilling  from  our  pockets,  what  are  the 
checks  of  the  Constitution  to  us?  A  fig  for  the  Constitu 
tion!  .  .  .  There  is  no  magic  in  the  word  union."  The 
President  of  South  Carolina  College  was  cheered  when  he 
said  in  a  public  meeting  that  the  time  had  come  to  calculate 
the  value  of  the  Union,  and  Webster  later  declared  himself 
convinced  in  1828  that  the  plan  for  a  Southern  Confederacy 
had  been  generally  received  with  favor  by  the  Southern 
leaders.  Was  that  whither  the  United  States  was  tending,  to 
separation  into  two  confederacies?  When  the  value  of  the 
Constitution  was  calculated  was  there  nothing  but  a  piece 
of  parchment,  and  no  magic  in  the  word  union? 

Senator  Hayne  of  South  Carolina  had  delivered  a  power 
ful  speech  in  the  Senate  in  favor  of  the  old  anti-national 
view  of  the  central  government.  He  obviously  looked  upon 
the  union  as  a  question  of  present  and  even  temporary 
expediency,  "  nothing  more  than  a  mere  matter  of  profit  and 
loss, ' '  complained  Webster ;  not  as  the  embodiment  and  repre 
sentative  of  a  great  and  glorious  nation  but  as  a  connection 
between  the  States  whose  beneficial  operation  was  sufficiently 
doubtful  to  require  constant  and  careful  inspection  of  its 
working  in  order  to  determine  the  expediency  of  its  longer 
continuance.  When  he  declared  the  Constitution  "a  com 
pact"  to  which  the  States  were  the  parties,  he  denied  that 
the  Constitution  had  created  a  nation  or  that  one  existed. 
The  States  were  sovereign,  he  insisted,  had  always  been 
sovereign  and  had  never  in  any  way  explicitly  or  implicitly 
parted  with  their  sovereignty;  and  were  therefore,  as  parties 


224  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

to  the  compact,  obviously  capable  of  judging  whether  the 
compact  for  the  creation  of  a  central  government  had  been 
observed  and  whether  or  not  it  was  expedient  to  continue 
under  it.  The  nature  of  the  general  government  as  defined  by 
its  own  Constitution  made  it  incapable  of  coercing  a  State 
which  solemnly  and  advisedly  declined  longer  to  obey  the 
Federal  statutes.  If  the  Federal  government  were  to  be 
allowed  to  interpret  the  Constitution  and  decide  upon  the 
extent  of  its  own  powers,  the  sovereignty,  independence,  and 
liberty  of  the  States  would  disappear,  and  the  United  States 
would  be,  what  its  framers  had  never  intended  it  to  be,  an 
entity  in  and  of  itself  superior  to  the  States,  which  would 
then  be  bound  to  obey  its  behests.  To  say  that  the  Consti 
tution  prevented  the  Southern  States  from  nullifying  the 
recent  oppressive  acts  of  the  Federal  government  would 
mean  that  those  States  had  no  resource  against  tyranny,  save 
armed  rebellion. 

He  appealed  to  the  founders  of  the  Republic,  to  the  de 
bates  of  the  Constitutional  Convention,  to  the  Virginia  and 
Kentucky  Resolutions.  His  was,  he  claimed,  the  historical 
Republican  doctrine,  "first  promulgated  by  the  fathers  of 
the  faith,"  whose  triumph  in  1800  had  "saved  the  Consti 
tution  at  its  last  gasp."  "Give  us  the  Constitution  of 
Jefferson,"  he  exclaimed,  "give  us  the  federal  compact  of 
independent  sovereign  States,  .  .  .  the  Constitution  of  1787 
as  its  framers  meant  it  and  constructed  it,  and  we  shall  deem 
ourselves  satisfied  and  safe."  That  Hayne  had  accurately 
described  the  idea  of  the  Constitution  held  by  the  majority 
of  people  in  most  districts  since  1789  it  was  difficult  to  deny ; 
that  upon  those  assumptions  every  section  of  the  country  had 
planned  secession  and  nullified  Federal  measures  was  equally 
incontestable;  but,  if  such  were  the  truth,  it  was  equally 
clear  that  no  nation  existed  in  America  nor  could  be  created 
so  long  as  a  powerful  section  of  the  community  stood  ready 
to  contest  the  expediency  and  desirability  of  its  existence. 
Hayne  took  his  stand  upon  precedent  and  history,  upon 
present  expediency,  and  made  the  welfare  of  individual  States 


"THE  AMERICAN  SYSTEM"  225 

his  criterion  of  the  excellence  of  union.  To  his  thinking, 
unless  absolute  unanimity  of  opinion  existed,  unless  every 
State  were  convinced  that  its  interests  were  furthered  by 
the  federal  bond  as  it  would  itself  have  advanced  them 
had  it  been  wholly  independent,  the  union  was  inexpedient. 

Webster,  in  his  great  speech  in  reply,  delivered  early  in 
the  year  1830,  took  his  stand  upon  the  Constitution  as  it 
was,  not  as  it  had  been  thought  to  be;  the  document  itself, 
he  said,  would  clear  all  controversies.  He  took  as  his  test 
of  expediency  the  welfare  of  all  the  States  and  insisted 
that  the  welfare  of  each  individual  State  would  be  better 
served  by  union  than  by  disunion.  Above  the  States,  he 
placed  the  nation:  the  Constitution  was  not  a  compact  be 
tween  States,  sovereign  entities,  but  a  supreme  and  funda 
mental  law  created  by  the  people  of  the  whole  country, 
making  of  them  one  nation.  "The  truth  is  ...  the  people 
of  the  United  States  are  one  people.  .  .  .  The  very  end  and 
purpose  of  the  Constitution  was  to  make  them  one  people 
in  these  particulars;  and  it  has  effectually  accomplished  its 
object.  ...  It  is  the  People  and  not  the  States  who  have 
entered  into  this  compact,  and  it  is  the  people  of  all  the 
United  States. "  "Webster  took  the  highest  possible  ground 
and  declared  that  a  nation  already  existed,  had  long  existed, 
and  that  the  sovereignty  of  the  States  had  been  surrendered 
by  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution.  He  thus  decided  in  the 
negative  all  the  issues  Hayne  had  raised.  The  Federal  govern 
ment  and  the  State  governments  were  both  limited  in  power; 
both  were  founded  by  the  people,  and  controlled  by  them; 
but  of  the  two,  pending  further  action  of  the  people,  the 
Federal  government  was  supreme.  Upon  it,  through  the 
Constitution,  the  people  as  a  whole  had  conferred  the  right 
to  decide  all  disputes  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  Constitution. 
Secession  and  nullification  by  any  State  were  under  the 
Constitution  impossible.  "Sir,  the  very  chief  end,  the  main 
design  for  which  the  whole  Constitution  was  framed  and 
adopted  was  to  establish  a  government  that  should  not  be 
obliged  to  act  through  State  agency  or  depend  on  State 


226  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

opinion  or  State  discretion."  From  the  Union  had  resulted 
safety  at  home,  "national,  social,  and  personal  happiness." 
In  his  peroration,  he  pronounced  as  a  rallying  cry  for  the 
men  of  his  own  day  and  of  a  later  generation,  the  flaming 
words — "dear  to  every  true  American  heart" — "Liberty  and 
Union,  now  and  forever,  one  and  inseparable." 

For  the  first  time,  the  great  majority  of  Americans  saw 
what  their  Constitution  actually  said;  for  the  first  time  they 
realized  that  it  proclaimed  the  creation  of  one  nation;  for 
the  first  time  under  impressive  circumstances,  a  man  of  promi 
nence  boldly  proclaimed  the  actual  existence  of  a  nation,  de 
clared  himself  proud  of  it  and  eloquently  argued  for  its 
"continuance."  The  vision  of  nationality  was  seen;  it  had 
now  to  be  realized.6 

It  was  even  doubtful  whether  it  would  not  be  at  once 
authoritatively  denied.  The  jubilation  in  New  England 
found  no  echo  in  the  South.  What  attitude  President  Jack 
son  would  take  was  not  known.  At  a  great  banquet  to  cel 
ebrate  the  birthday  of  Jefferson,  a  series  of  toasts  was  ar 
ranged  to  put  the  issue  squarely  before  the  President  and  to 
force  him  to  declare  himself  for  one  nation  or  for  a  compact 
of  sovereign  States.  Amid  breathless  silence,  Jackson  pulled 
his  lank  form  erect  and  gave  his  toast :  *  *  Our  Federal  Union. 
It  must  be  preserved." 

6  The  truth  of  this  statement  can  scarcely  be  better  demonstrated 
than  by  quoting  the  conclusions  of  one  of  the  keenest  foreign  observers 
who  ever  visited  this  country.  Alexis  de  Tocqueville  described  what 
he  saw  and  heard  here  in  1834-5.  "We  ought  not  to  confound  the 
future  prospects  of  the  republic  with  those  of  the  Union.  The  Union 
is  an  accident,  which  will  only  last  as  long  as  circumstances  are  favor 
able  to  its  existence;  but  a  republican  form  of  Government  seems  to 
me  to  be  the  natural  state  of  the  Americans.  .  .  .  The  Union  exists 
principally  in  the  law  which  formed  it;  one  revolution,  one  change  in 
public  opinion  might  destroy  it  forever;  but  the  republic  has  a  much 
deeper  foundation  to  rest  upon.  ...  It  was  impossible  at  the  founda 
tion  of  the  States,  and  it  would  still  be  difficult  to  establish  a  central 
administration  in  America.  The  inhabitants  are  dispersed  over  too 
great  a  space,  and  separated  by  too  many  natural  obstacles,  for  one 
man  to  undertake  to  direct  the  details  of  their  existence.  America  is 
therefore  preeminently  the  country  of  provincial  and  municipal  govern 
ment."  Democracy  in  America,  I,  425-6.  London,  1875. 


"THE  AMERICAN  SYSTEM"  227 

The  advisability  of  national  government  had  been  argued, 
its  expediency  questioned;  statements  freely  made  that  a 
second  confederacy  was  far  preferable  to  a  national  bond; 
but  there  was  little  doubt  that  the  North  agreed  with  Web 
ster  and  stood  for  one  nation  and  rejected  the  notion  of 
two. 

Characteristically,  the  difficulty  was  compromised.  Where, 
in  1824,  the  policy  of  the  satisfaction  of  all  interests  had  been 
espoused,  Jackson  pronounced  himself  in  favor  of  the  re 
striction  of  Federal  powers  and  refused  to  assist  any  interest. 
States '  rights  and  nullification  he  declined  to  recognize. 
South  Carolina  must  submit  to  Federal  authority. 

At  the  South  there  was  no  desire  to  force  the  issue  at 
this  time;  they  felt  sure  of  obtaining  what  they  asked  by 
some  simpler  method  than  a  test  of  strength.  For  the  South 
had  control  of  the  Federal  government  and  was  growing 
so  fast  in  wealth  and  strength  that  an  equally  rapid  develop 
ment  of  the  North  seemed  hardly  possible.  There  was  little 
to  gain,  they  thought,  by  actual  secession  and  the  conces 
sion  of  a  victory  to  Webster  in  the  forum  did  not  seem  mate 
rially  to  affect  the  real  issue.  The  talk  of  secession  was  there 
fore  dropped. 

To  remove  the  most  obvious  grievances,  the  high  tariff 
was  repealed  and  a  low  one  adopted;  the  internal  improve 
ments  which  the  West  demanded  were  declared  unconsti 
tutional.  As  the  West  and  South  both  objected  to  the  ex 
istence  of  the  United  States  Bank  and  attributed  to  its 
manipulations  the  scarcity  of  currency  in  their  territory  and 
their  condition  as  debtor  communities,  the  Bank  was  also 
declared  unconstitutional,  an  "un-American  monopoly,"  and 
was  brought  to  a  sudden  end  as  a  governmental  agency  by 
the  removal  of  Federal  deposits  in  1833  to  certain  selected 
State  banks.  The  government  declined  to  renew  the  char 
ter,  and  completely  changed  the  fiscal  policy  of  Hamilton. 
Finally,  after  various  expedients  had  been  tried  and  rejected, 
an  independent  Treasury  was  established  in  1843  into  which 
the  government's  funds  were  to  be  paid,  where  they  were  to 


228  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

be  conserved,  whence  the  currency  was  to  be  issued  and 
controlled,  and  by  which,  in  general,  the  fiscal  business  of 
the  government  was  to  be  transacted.  If  the  advocates  of 
nationality  had  now  a  theoretical  victory  in  the  forum,  the 
anti-nationalist  party  had  shorn  the  Federal  government  of 
such  national  functions  as  it  had  been  discharging  and  had 
in  large  measure  reversed  many  of  its  most  important  poli 
cies.  Webster  might  be  right  as  to  what  the  Constitution 
said;  but  States'  sovereignty  would  be  safe  until  the  people 
as  a  whole  should  read  the  document  through  his  spectacles 
and  should  elect  an  administration  to  enforce  his  reading  of 
its  provisions. 


XVII 
JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY 

IT  is  not  possible  in  so  brief  a  sketch  as  this  to  do  more  than 
advert  to  the  significant  constitutional  development  of  the 
period  from  1789  to  1829  during  which  the  warp  and  woof 
of  American  democracy  became  thoroughly  established,  but  it 
is  essential  at  least  to  enumerate  the  conspicuous  elements 
which  practice  introduced  into  the  original  concept. 

The  democratic  institutions  which  to-day  exist  in  the  United 
States  are  too  firmly  knit  into  the  "bone  and  gristle"  of 
the  nation  and  are  too  clearly  adapted  to  our  conditions  to 
have  been  " created"  by  any  one  document  or  by  any  one 
man.  Because  certain  definite  stages  of  development  became 
perfectly  clear  at  certain  epochs,  because  certain  men  were 
largely  responsible  for  informing  the  public  mind  of  the 
conditions  actually  existing  and  for  directing  its  choice  of 
a  remedy,  we  have  been  in  the  habit  of  writing  about  Hamil- 
tonianism,  Jeffersonianism,  arid  Jacksonianism.  In  reality 
the  theories  and  concepts,  the  administrative  machinery  by 
which  we  have  actually  been  governed,  are  too  complex  and 
too  numerous  to  have  been  produced  by  anything  short  of  the 
slow  growth  of  the  community.  "It  is  a  great  mistake," 
said  Mr.  Mercer  in  the  Constitutional  Convention,  "to  sup 
pose  that  the  paper  we  are  to  propose  will  govern  the  United 
States.  It  is  the  men  whom  it  will  bring  into  the  Government 
and  interest  in  maintaining  it  that  is  to  govern  them.  The 
paper  will  only  mark  out  the  mode  and  the  form.  Men  are 
the  substance  and  must  do  the  business. ' ' 1  The  form  of  the 
Constitution  was  evolved  in  the  various  State  constitutions 
made  during  the  Revolution;  the  federal  idea  came  from  an 

i  Hunt's  Madison's  Notes,  II,  165. 

229 


230  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

attempt  to  find  some  solution  for  the  economic  difficulties 
whose  pressure  was  so  seriously  felt  after  the  war  was  ended ; 
the  first  administrative  traditions  were  created  by  the  pressure 
of  necessity  and  the  genius  of  Hamilton.  Jeffersonian  democ 
racy,  on  the  other  hand,  was  the  product  of  the  various  at 
tempts  to  interpret  the  actual  document  called  the  Constitu 
tion;  while  Jacksonian  democracy,  in  which  we  recognize  the 
final  product  of  American  genius,  was  caused  by  the  growth 
of  the  country,  especially  of  the  West,  and  by  the  attempt  to 
"live"  democracy"?) 

The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  is  a  very  large  docu 
ment  indeed  and  provides  for  the  doing  of  many  things  not 
foreseen  by  the  framers  of  the  "paper"  and  for  the  doing  of 
many  things  they  saw  would  be  necessary,  in  other  ways  than 
those  they  deemed  best.  With  the  passage  of  the  twelfth 
amendment  in  1801,  the  feature  most  admired  by  the  framers 
was  practically  abandoned.  It  had  not  been  thought  desir 
able  that  the  people  should  in  any  direct  way  influence  the 
selection  of  the  President,  and  accordingly  an  electoral  col 
lege  had  been  provided  which  the  people  should  elect  and 
which  should  then  calmly  and  deliberately  vote  for  the  fittest 
man  for  the  highest  post,  the  candidate  receiving  the  next 
largest  number  of  votes,  indicated  therefore  in  the  electors' 
opinion  as  most  desirable  second  choice,  to  become  Vice-Presi- 
dent.  The  electors  were  forced  by  the  Constitution  to  meet 
in  the  various  States  and  to  vote  in  absolute  ignorance  of 
what  was  actually  being  done  elsewhere.  After  the  first  two 
elections,  it  became  apparent  that  some  sort  of  previous  agree 
ment  among  the  electors  would  be  essential  to  prevent  a  too 
great  scattering  of  the  votes  and  the  accidental  choice  by  a 
ridiculously  small  minority  of  some  obviously  unsuitable  and 
objectionable  candidate.  So  completely  successful  was  the 
attempt  at  previous  agreement  in  1800  that  Jefferson  and 
Burr  received  the  same  number  of  votes,  no  candidate  received 
a  majority,  the  election  was  thrown  into  Congress,  and  an  un 
seemly  scramble  for  votes  ensued,  in  which  Jefferson,  whom 
nearly  every  one  desired  for  President,  was  almost  defeated. 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  231 

An  amendment  was  at  once  passed  providing  that  the  electors 
should  vote  for  both  President  and  Vice-President  instead 
of  simply  for  President.  The  provision  that  the  electors 
should  meet  in  their  own  States  was  not  changed. 

Despite  the  amendment,  the  desirability  of  a  previous  ar 
rangement,  generally  understood,  in  regard  to  the  fittest  candi 
date  was  still  obvious.  Otherwise,  the  electors  voted  in  the 
dark,  practically  threw  the  State's  vote  away,  and  permitted 
the  few  States  who  would  go  to  the  trouble  of  a  previous 
agreement  to  elect  any  candidate  they  chose,  without  giving 
the  rest  even  a  chance  to  vote  against  him.  The  right  to  de 
feat  a  certain  candidate  was  soon  seen  to  be  as  significant, 
and  perhaps  of  more  practical  importance,  than  the  right  to 
select  the  man  really  preferred.  It  had  been  the  habit  in  the 
various  States  from  the  earliest  times  to  nominate  candidates 
for  executive  positions  in  a  caucus,  composed  of  the  members 
of  the  legislature,  which  met  for  the  purpose  after  the  regu 
lar  session  was  over.  The  voters  in  the  towns  and  counties 
could  not  spare  the  time  to  come  to  the  capital  and  found  it 
much  more  satisfactory  to  vote  for  or  against  certain  men, 
whom  their  representatives  from  the  legislative  caucus  told 
them  were  being  voted  on  elsewhere,  than  it  was  to  vote  at 
random.  This  flourishing  institution,  the  caucus,  long  famil 
iar  to  all  the  members  of  the  first  Federal  congresses,  was  at 
once  employed  to  solve  the  self -same  difficulty,  and  to  its  de 
liberations  we  owe  the  choice  of  Madison  and  Monroe.  The 
electors  were  not  compelled  to  vote  for  the  caucus  candidate ; 
but  it  was  safer,  for  he  invariably  received  enough  votes  to 
elect.  Other  candidates  were  frequently  put  into  the  field, 
men  of  excellent  character  but  not  widely  enough  known  to 
cause  that  sort  of  unanimous  decision  as  to  their  fitness  which 
had  been  responsible  for  the  choice  of  Washington  and  Jeffer 
son.  Indeed,  by  1820,  it  was  seen  that  no  candidate,  how 
ever  admirable,  would  stand  any  chance  in  opposition  to  the 
caucus  candidate  without  the  same  definite  previous  agree 
ment,  scrupulously  observed,  to  vote  for  him  in  enough  States 
to  command  a  majority  in  the  electoral  college.  The  congres- 


232  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

sional  caucus  had  been  invoked  to  prevent  haphazard  voting 
and  had  literally  taken  the  choice  of  President  away  from 
the  electors  and  put  it  into  the  very  hands  deemed  most  unfit 
by  the  f ramers  of  the  Constitution,  into  the  hands  of  the  legis 
lature. 

As  each  successive  election  more  and  more  clearly  demon 
strated  the  power  of  the  caucus  and  the  fact  that  its  nomina 
tion  was  equivalent  to  election,  the  advantages  which  would 
result  from  its  manipulation  were  appreciated  by  the  less 
scrupulous.  In  1820,  Crawford,  a  politician  of  unsavory 
reputation  and  little  ability,  nearly  secured  the  nomination, 
and  the  news  thoroughly  frightened  and  aroused  the  country. 
The  fact  that  the  people  did  not  directly  elect  mattered  little, 
for  the  electors  had  for  years  never  used  their  prerogative 
of  choice  and  had  nearly  always  voted  as  directed  by  their 
constituents.  The  people  were  really  robbed  of  their  right 
to  choose. 

To  break  the  power  of  the  caucus,  to  restore  the  right  of 
selection  to  the  people  (a  right  which  it  had  already  been 
forgotten  had  been  thought  most  undesirable  by  the  framers 
of  the  Constitution),  an  attempt  was  begun  in  1822  to  ob 
tain  by  previous  announcement  and  hard  work  a  sufficient 
consensus  of  opinion  in  favor  of  some  one  man  to  enable  him 
to  defeat  the  next  candidate  of  the  caucus.  Clay  was  nomi 
nated  by  the  legislature  of  Kentucky  two  years  before  the 
election  of  1824  and  was  soon  only  one  of  sixteen  or  more 
candidates,  all  nominated  in  a  similar  way,  among  whom 
Jackson  was  clearly  most  popular  with  the  masses.  The 
caucus,  by  this  time  thoroughly  unpopular,  was  thinly  at 
tended  in  1824  and  nominated  Crawford  and  Gallatin.  Jack 
son,  Adams,  and  Clay  had  all  been  nominated  independently 
by  friends  in  most  of  the  States  and  something  like  a  real 
vote  by  the  people  on  all  the  candidates  for  President  took 
place.  Jackson,  Adams,  Crawford,  and  Clay  all  received  a 
considerable  vote  in  the  order  named,  but  none  had  sufficient 
for  a  choice,  and  Congress  was  after  all  to  choose  between 
them.  A  great  deal  of  excited  discussion  and  the  passing 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  233 

of  promises  between  Adams  and  Clay  finally  made  the  former 
President.  Mr.  Clay's  adherents  were  strong  in  the  House 
of  Representatives  and  he  was  able  to  control  enough  votes 
to  decide  the  matter  in  Adams's  favor,  with  the  understand 
ing,  faithfully  observed  by  Adams,  that  Clay  should  become 
Secretary  of  State.  The  result  was  loudly  denounced  by 
Jackson's  supporters;  the  people  had  been  again  defrauded. 
Jackson  had  received  easily  the  largest  popular  vote  and  a 
plurality  in  the  electoral  college,  and  had  been  " robbed"  of 
his  rights  by  the  "corrupt  deal"  between  Adams  and  Clay. 
War  to  the  death  was  declared;  the  most  elaborate  arrange 
ments  yet  made  preceded  the  election  of  1828  and  Jackson 
was  triumphantly  swept  into  the  presidential  chair. 

While  he  received  nearly  double  the  number  of  votes  in 
the  electoral  college  that  Adams  did,  the  estimated  popular 
vote  showed  something  approaching  equality,  and  the  number 
of  States  in  which  the  vote  had  been  close  was  sufficient  to 
give  the  opposition  hope  of  reversing  the  result.  The  caucus 
was  dead  indeed,  but  it  was  even  more  apparent  than  ever 
that  if  the  minority  were  to  prevail  or  the  majority  maintain 
their  position,  both  must  organize  even  more  carefully  than 
before.  The  amount  of  labor  involved  in  the  method  of 
nomination  pursued  in  Jackson's  case  was  so  great  that  it 
seemed  hardly  likely  to  succeed  again,  and  much  more  likely 
to  reproduce  the  situation  of  1824  and  throw  the  election 
into  the  hands  of  Congress.  The  campaign  of  1832,  there 
fore,  saw  in  the  field  a  new  organization,  nothing  more  nor 
less  than  a  caucus  or  convention  chosen  by  the  people  ex 
pressly  for  the  purpose  of  nominating  a  candidate  and  of 
formulating  a  policy.  The  name  " National  Republicans" 
was  adopted,  Henry  Clay  nominated  for  President,  and  the 
first  party  "platform"  or  policy  announced.  The  Democrats 
promptly  followed  suit  and  by  a  similar  convention  nominated 
Jackson  again. 

Thus  originated  the  two  great  national  parties,  whose  in 
fluence  has  dominated  Federal  politics  ever  since  and  which 
are  the  most  important  part  of  the  machinery  designed  by 


234  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Jackson  and  his  supporters  to  make  effective  the  new  demo 
cratic  maxim,  the  direct  rule  of  the  people.  As  Calhoun  put 
it,  "Let  the  people  have  the  power  directly."  Needless  to 
add,  no  idea  had  been  further  from  the  minds  of  the  framers 
of  the  State  and  Federal  constitutions.  Colonial  democ 
racy  had  been  a  limited  democracy  where  the  fit  acted  for  the 
unfit;  it  had  favored  indirect  influence  by  the  majority,  and 
had  allowed  the  people  in  Federal  government  even  less  actual 
participation  than  in  State  government,  restricting  their 
share  to  the  choice  of  the  presidential  electors,  of  representa 
tives,  and  of  the  State  legislatures  which  elected  the  sena 
tors.  Indeed,  the  electors  had  been  by  no  means  infrequently 
chosen  by  the  legislatures  prior  to  the  Jacksonian  regime. 
Jackson  proclaimed  the  right  of  the  people  to  direct  influence 
in  local,  State,  and  Federal  government  and,  whether  or  not 
as  a  direct  result  of  his  campaign,  certainly  universal  man 
hood  suffrage  became  the  slogan  in  the  States,  and  of  course 
the  States,  having  in  their  hands  the  provisions  for  the  Fed 
eral  suffrage,  promptly  projected  manhood  suffrage  into  Fed 
eral  politics. 

Herein  Jacksonian  democracy  differed  from  Jeffersonian 
democracy.  Jeffersonian  democracy  had  laid  stress  upon  the 
proper  scope  of  central  government,  upon  the  proper  in 
terpretation  of  the  Constitution,  upon  the  relation  of  the  in 
dividual  to  the  central  government  rather  than  upon  the 
definition  of  *  *  the  people. ' '  On  the  whole,  its  august  founder 
had  been  content  with  the  limitations  upon  the  suffrage  com 
mon  at  the  time  and  had  felt  that  local  and  State  govern 
ments  were  in  their  existing  condition  almost  ideal.  He  had 
been  concerned  with  guarding  the  individual  from  the  new 
colossus,  Federal  government,  had  been  anxious  to  limit  its 
province  as  much  as  possible,  with  the  idea  that  the  less  di 
rection  the  individual  received  from  without,  the  better;  the 
freer  he  could  be  from  all  interference  beyond  what  other 
individuals  had  a  right  to  exert  by  an  appeal  to  the  judiciary, 
the  better  it  would  be  for  him  and  for  the  community. 
Could  the  strict  interpretation  of  constitutions  and  laws  be- 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  235 

come  an  actuality,  all  desirable  results  would  follow.  That 
elaborate  machinery  would  be  necessary  to  enable  the  people 
even  formally  to  participate  in  elections  and  to  influence  the 
policy  of  the  State,  he  declined  to  believe.  After  all, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  the  form  of  Jeffersonian  democ 
racy  was  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  it  was  a  reaction  from 
the  Hamiltonian  notion  of  a  strong  centralized  administra 
tion  which  should  effectively  correlate  and  direct  the  energies 
of  the  individuals  who  composed  the  community. 

Similarly,  Jacksonian  democracy  was  a  revolt  against  the 
machinery  which  had  been  developed  to  express  a  decision 
for  the  people.  The  people  could  act  directly,  must  act  di 
rectly,  and  needed  no  mediator.  It  was  not  Jackson,  how 
ever,  so  much  as  Webster  who  gave  the  idea  immediate  cur 
rency  and  stability  by  showing  a  delighted  and  astonished 
public  that  their  own  Constitution  vested  in  the  people,  in 
the  new  Jacksonian  sense,  the  ultimate  power  of  decision. 
"It  is,  Sir,"  said  Webster  in  that  famous  reply  to  Hayne  of 
1830,  ''the  people's  Constitution,  the  people's  government, 
made  for  the  people,  made  by  the  people,  and  answerable  to 
the  people. "  Upon  Hayne,  he  cast  the  stigma  of  maintain 
ing  a  notion  repugnant  to  democracy,  that  the  States  and  not 
the  people  were  sovereign.  The  subtleties  of  Hayne 's  doc 
trine  he  brushed  aside ;  its  historical  defense  he  ignored  with 
magnificent  assurance,  conscious  that  for  the  first  time  the 
American  people  would  see  that  States'  rights  was  in  essence 
undemocratic  and  contrary  to  the  notion  of  the  supremacy  of 
the  people  as  individuals.  That  it  was  also  an  anti-national 
doctrine,  he  declared  with  eloquence,  but  this  the  people  did 
not  as  yet  grasp.  It  is  this  reading  of  the  new  Jacksonian 
democracy  into  the  Constitution,  the  realization  of  what  the 
words  of  the  document  actually  said,  the  failure  to  know  that 
he  was  not  using  the  words  "the  people"  in  the  sense  com 
mon  in  1789,  that  made  Webster's  1830  speech  a  landmark 
in  our  constitutional  history. 

States'  sovereignty  was  undemocratic!  The  notion  so  com 
pletely  harmonized  with  the  interests  and  desires  of  the  New 


236  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Englanders  that  it  was  caught  up  at  once  and  became  the 
basis  of  their  political  thinking.  Behind  the  ideal  of  na 
tionalism,  "Webster  had  definitely  placed  Jacksonian  democ 
racy  and  a  reading  of  the  Constitution  whose  cogency  and 
accuracy  it  was  impossible  to  deny.  Historical  evidence,  quo 
tations  from  the  fathers,  all  were  and  always  will  be  futile 
against  Webster's  dramatic,  eloquent  reading  of  the  words 
of  the  document.  Moreover,  Webster  made  the  word 
"  union "  synonymous  with  nationalism,  and  made  national 
ism  equivalent  to  strong  central  government,  all  of  which  he 
asserted  was  provided  by  this  same  democratic  Constitution. 
Yet  the  idea  of  union  was  less  potent  in  causing  the  popu 
larity  of  the  speech  than  the  proof  that  the  Constitution  it 
self  already  contained  the  idea  of  democracy  and  popular 
rights,  the  proof  that  Jackson  was  right  and  the  caucus 
wrong.  Jefferson  had  been  able  to  show  the  anti-nationalists 
that  the  Constitution  could  be  read  in  their  sense  and  that  the 
grant  of  power  did  not  necessarily  presume  its  abuse  or  even 
its  use.  It  had  remained  for  Jackson  and  Webster  to  prove 
that  the  Constitution  explicitly  enthroned  radical  democracy : 
— that  the  interpretation  of  the  document  and  of  the  powers 
granted  by  it  rested  not  with  the  States  or  with  the  Federal 
officials  but  with  the  electorate. 

Along  with  this  fundamental  change  in  the  notion  of  who 
were  the  people  went  the  development  of  legislative,  admin 
istrative,  and  judicial  forms  and  traditions.  The  House  of 
Representatives  was  soon  after  1789  forced  by  the  exigencies 
of  the  situation  to  develop  the  committee  system,  the  rules 
for  restricting  debate,  and  the  enormous  power  of  the 
Speaker,  which  really  to-day  have  taken  from  the  House  it 
self  the  power  of  legislation.  As  the  Constitution  was  the 
work  of  Madison  and  Wilson,  as  the  executive  departments 
were  the  creation  of  Hamilton,  so  the  machinery  by  which 
legislation  is  actually  made  in  the  House  was  distinctly  the 
work  of  Henry  Clay.  In  the  Speakership,  the  Rules  of  the 
House,  and  the  Committee  System,  Clay  has  left  an  endur 
ing  mark  upon  our  national  institutions.  He  made  the 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCBACY  237 

Speaker  of  the  House  more  powerful  than  the  President  and 
raised  that  office  to  a  height  it  has  never  lost.  By  1830,  too, 
the  transfer  of  the  preponderance  of  legislative  power  from 
the  House  to  the  Senate,  which  has  made  the  latter  what  it  is 
to-day,  the  balance  wheel  of  our  legislative  fabric,  was  well 
under  way. 

The  real  Constitution  of  the  United  States  by  which  we 
live  was  largely  written  by  Chief  Justice  Marshall  during 
his  long  term  of  office  from  1801  to  1835.  The  interpre 
tation  of  the  broad  phrases  and  inclusive  wording  intention 
ally  placed  in  the  document  by  the  framers  to  enable  it  to 
be  adapted  to  the  exigencies  of  times  and  occasions  was  a 
difficult  task  under  any  conditions.  It  was  essential  that 
something  more  than  a  few  specific  decisions  should  be  made ; 
the  general  rules  for  the  consistent  interpretation  of  the 
document  under  all  conditions  had  to  be  developed,  tested, 
and  applied  to  a  sufficient  variety  of  cases  to  provide  the 
country  with  the  definite  body  of  constitutional  precedents 
which  alone  could  give  the  individual  that  degree  of  personal 
and  civil  liberty  the  Constitution  guaranteed  him.  In  par 
ticular  the  clause  concerning  the  powers  of  Congress  required 
most  careful  treatment.  It  was  at  once  obvious  that  only  a 
tithe  of  the  powers  which  Congress  must  actually  exercise 
had  been  enumerated  and  that  only  a  liberal  interpretation 
of  these  clauses  would  permit  the  Federal  government  to  legis 
late  outside  a  very  narrow  range  indeed.  Jefferson  and 
Madison  had  declared  for  the  strictest  possible  construction 
and  the  unconstitutionality  of  every  power  not  explicitly 
granted.  Marshall,  however,  as  Chief  Justice,  possessed  an 
authority  to  interpret  the  Constitution  which  was  denied 
the  President,  and  the  Constitution  itself  made  his  decisions 
binding  law.  To  him  we  owe  the  doctrine  of  implied  powers 
which  permits  Congress  to  legislate  upon  all  subjects  "neces 
sary  and  proper"  for  compassing  the  ends  for  which  the 
Federal  government  was  instituted.  Under  this  aegis  the 
most  important  work  of  the  Federal  government  has  been 
done.  The  decisions  of  Marshall  are  actually  as  much  a  part 


238  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

of  the  law  considered  binding  in  the  United  States  as  if  they 
had  been  solemnly  adopted  by  the  Constitutional  Convention 
in  1787. 

The  movement  for  the  extension  of  the  direct  control  of  the 
people  spread  with  extraordinary  rapidity  in  the  decades  fol 
lowing  the  election  of  Jackson.  In  the  States,  manhood  suf 
frage  was  generally  adopted;  the  appointment  of  executive 
officers  pretty  thoroughly  abandoned  in  favor  of  election  for 
short  terms;  the  terms  of  legislators  generally  reduced  in 
length;  and  the  separation  of  powers,  long  since  adopted  in 
theory,  actually  instituted  in  practice.  Scarcely  were  these 
changes  completed  than  the  first  of  the  great  waves  of  immi 
gration  reached  the  eastern  States  and  created  new  condi 
tions  in  State  and  especially  in  city  government.  Soon  the 
registration  laws  and  laws  fixing  the  qualifications  for  voters 
were  being  altered  to  admit  these  newly  arrived  members  as 
citizens  after  shorter  and  shorter  periods  of  actual  residence, 
until,  by  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War,  boss  rule,  with  its 
accompanying  graft  and  corruption,  had  become  thoroughly 
established  in  State,  municipal,  and  local  government  in  most 
parts  of  the  country. 

In  Federal  government,  a  new  rule  concerning  executive 
officials  had  been  instituted  by  Jackson,  patterned  on  Jef 
ferson  's  half-hearted  measures  in  the  same  direction.  "To  the 
victors  belong  the  spoils"  was  the  slogan  of  the  army  of  office- 
seekers  who  stormed  Washington  in  1829.  There  was  no 
doubt  a  plausible  defense:  the  chief  executive  must  have 
around  him  "friends  of  the  people, "  who  would  execute  his 
commands  according  to  the  spirit  as  well  as  the  letter  in  which 
they  had  been  given.  Washington's  and  Adams's  unsuccess 
ful  attempts  to  create  a  Cabinet  from  warring  elements  had 
early  caused  the  general  acceptance  of  the  necessity  of 
harmony  in  the  immediate  circle  of  the  President;  but  Jack 
son  was  the  first  actually  to  put  into  operation  the  principle 
of  the  "clean  sweep"  throughout  the  Federal  offices.  Thus 
the  spoils  system  entered  American  politics  and  became  speed 
ily  one  of  its  best  accepted  maxims,  whose  literal  fulfilment 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  239 

was  invariably  demanded  by  the  impatient  cohorts  and  rarely 
denied. 

The  period  between  1815  and  1840  was  a  great  formative 
period  when  protective  and  compromise  principles  were 
adopted;  when  legislative,  judicial,  and  executive  traditions 
assumed  the  form  they  still  retain;  when  manhood  suffrage, 
appointive  officers,  and  city  bosses  were  changing  vitally  the 
aspects  of  democracy  as  the  earlier  generations  lived  it. 
Lastly  and  by  no  means  least,  it  had  been  a  period  in  which 
the  bud  of  national  consciousness  had  been  bursting  into 
flower  among  the  people  themselves.  A  new  nation  was 
slowly  evolving;  and  here  and  there  an  individual,  seized 
with  the  consciousness  of  the  great  developments  gradually 
unfolding,  began  to  express  in  no  doubtful  tongue  his  notion 
of  what  that  national  spirit  was  and  ought  to  be.  Among 
those  who  influenced  popular  thinking,  Daniel  Webster  again 
stands  foremost  with  his  great  orations  on  the  Pilgrims  and 
on  the  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill.  He  created  a  new  conception 
of  the  colonial  period  and  of  the  Revolution,  national  in  its 
scope  and  expression,  which  was  caught  up  into  the  school- 
books  children  were  given  to  read  and  on  which  men  who 
later  fought  in  the  Northern  armies  were  nourished.  Weems 
had  already  produced  eulogistic  biographies  of  Washington, 
Franklin,  and  other  notables,  whose  ready  sale  showed  the 
growing  popular  taste  for  literature  glorifying  the  endeavors 
of  the  men  who  had  been  conspicuously  nationalists,  working 
not  for  a  single  State's  welfare  but  obviously  for  the  good  of 
the  whole  country.  By  1850,  the  literature  of  American  his 
tory  had  been  further  enriched  by  Irving 's  dramatic  tale  of 
Columbus,  by  Bancroft's  intensely  " patriotic"  and  national 
istic  description  of  the  history  of  America  to  the  adoption  of 
the  Constitution.  Sparks 's  editions  of  the  writings  of  the 
Revolutionary  fathers  were  also  intentionally  prepared  to  in 
culcate  a  love  of  the  country  as  a  whole  and  an  admiration 
for  the  men  who  had  worked  for  our  union  under  one  govern 
ment  as  well  as  for  our  independence  from  England.  The 
poets  of  New  England,  Lowell  and  Longfellow  especially,  gave 


240  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

voice  to  this  growing  sentiment  of  admiration  for  our  national 
welfare.  So  far  as  the  new  country  had  any  literature,  it  was 
written  by  Northern  nationalists,  a  fact  significant  in  explain 
ing  the  strong  sentiment  in  favor  of  nationalism  in  the  North 
in  1860. 

Of  an  identity  distinct  from  other  races,  the  individual 
American  became  acutely  conscious  about  1830.  Truth  to 
tell,  an  idea  that  we  were  different  from  and  better  than 
other  people  was  not  unknown  in  colonial  days  and  became 
common  during  the  Revolution ;  but  it  was  then  almost  certain 
to  reflect  as  much  local  pride  and  satisfaction  as  a  sense  of 
difference  between  Americans  and  Europeans.  Until  1830, 
the  feeling  of  a  difference  between  Americans  was  still  too 
keen  to  allow  it  to  become  apparent  that  the  people  of  the 
whole  coast  had  really  begun  to  think  of  themselves  as  Ameri 
cans  rather  than  as  inhabitants  of  certain  States.  "With  this 
acute  consciousness  of  racial  difference  came  at  first  an 
arrogance  and  a  conceit  which  we  find  only  too  faithfully  re 
flected  in  the  pages  of  travelers.  The  American  insisted  upon 
the  instantaneous  recognition  of  the  superiority  of  his  coun 
try,  and  its  institutions,  literature,  and  culture,  over  all 
other  countries  and  their  qualities  and  graces.  Crude,  rough, 
ill-mannered  as  this  spirit  seemed  to  the  sensitive  Dickens,  it 
is  nevertheless  to  the  historian  unmistakable  evidence  of  the 
dawning  of  a  truly  national  consciousness,  of  the  disappear 
ance  of  the  harsh  lines  which  had  kept  the  people  so  sepa 
rated  from  one  another  throughout  the  colonial  period.  To 
be  sure,  nothing  like  definitive  agreement  or  a  consensus  of 
opinion  on  any  subject  had  been  attained,  except  on  the  one 
fact  that  America  was  different  from  and  therefore  better 
than  Europe;  and  until  a  clear  consensus  of  opinion  should 
reach  a  point  at  which  the  community  as  a  whole  became  con 
scious  that  it  existed,  until  it  was  no  longer  a  matter  of  ideal 
ism  but  a  plain  inevitable  fact,  no  nation,  in  the  modern  or 
ganic  sense  of  the  word,  could  or  would  exist.  Still,  all-un 
conscious,  the  nation  had  begun  to  try  to  think,  act,  and  be 
lieve. 


XVIII 
THE  TWO  DIVERGING  SECTIONS 

THE  economic  forces  in  operation  in  1830,  which  were  swiftly 
producing  south  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line  and  of  the  Ohio 
River  conditions  more  and  more  widely  divergent  from  those 
north  of  it,  are  all  connoted  by  the  single  word — cotton. 
And  cotton  connotes  slavery.  In  1789  neither  cotton  nor 
slavery  were  factors  of  prime  consequence ;  in  1815  both  were 
clearly  of  growing  importance  and  were  seen  to  be  potentially 
capable  of  great  extension.  By  1830,  the  increasing  demand 
for  cotton,  the  ease  with  which  the  South  had  been  able  to 
meet  it,  the  astonishing  profits,  proved  to  the  dullest  minds 
that  in  cotton  the  United  States  had  at  last  found  the  medium 
of  exchange  with  Europe  which  it  had  so  long  lacked,  and 
which  with  every  decade  was  becoming  more  and  more  ade 
quate.  Indeed,  many  and  many  an  excited  planter  and  New 
England  merchant  saw  in  cotton  the  means  of  freeing  the 
country  from  its  long  economic  dependence  upon  Europe. 
They  were  ready  to  teach  their  children,  in  the  words  of  De 
Bow,  "to  hold  the  cotton  plant  in  one  hand  and  the  sword  in 
the  other,  ever  ready  to  defend  it  as  the  source  of  commercial 
power  abroad  and  through  that  of  independence  at  home." 

The  most  obvious  result  of  the  cotton-culture  had  been  to 
render  slavery  extremely  profitable  and  to  put  an  end  to  the 
talk  at  the  South  of  the  desirability  of  its  abolition  which  had 
been  so  common  in  Virginia  and  in  South  Carolina  between 
1815  and  1825.  The  vast  increase  in  the  cotton  crop — from 
about  four  hundred  fifty  thousand  bales  in  1816  to  one  million 
bales  in  1826,  over  eighty  per  cent  of  which  was  promptly 
exported — of  course  greatly  increased  the  exports  of  the 
United  States  and  facilitated  exchange  with  Europe.  In- 

241 


242  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

deed,  in  the  palmiest  days  of  the  old  pre-revolutionary  smug 
gling-trade,  the  ease  and  profitableness  of  trade  with  Europe 
had  never  been  so  great.  The  loss  of  the  West  Indian  trade  be 
came  each  year  of  less  consequence,  and,  as  the  country  devel 
oped,  it  became  clearer  and  clearer  to  Americans  that  the  West 
India  market,  even  if  it  had  continued  open  to  them,  would 
have  been  inadequate  to  consume  the  whole  swelling  volume 
of  produce.  Thankfully,  they  realized  their  deliverance  when 
the  abolition  of  slavery  by  England  in  1833  ruined  her  West 
India  sugar  plantations  and  hence  destroyed  at  one  blow  the 
original  source  of  the  commercial  prosperity  of  the  Atlantic 
coast.  The  problem  of  our  relations  to  the  West  Indies  had 
solved  itself.  There  was  now  no  recourse  save  cotton. 

The  cotton-culture  had  also  trebled  the  value  of  land  and 
of  slaves  at  the  South.  It  was  a  method  of  cultivation  pe 
culiarly  adopted  to  the  use  of  slave  labor.  The  stalks  of  the 
previous  year's  crop  were  first  broken  down;  the  field  was 
then  laid  off  into  beds  by  plowing  a  furrow  between  the  old 
rows  and  lapping  on  it  from  four  to  six  other  furrows,  thus 
leaving  the  field  in  ridges  about  four  feet  apart.  After  the 
earth  had  been  pulverized  with  a  small  harrow,  and  the 
center  of  the  ridge  split  with  a  plow,  negro  women  sowed 
cotton  seed  in  the  trench  at  the  rate  of  about  two  bushels 
per  acre  and  the  trench  was  closed  by  dragging  a  sort  of 
scraper  over  it.  The  young  plants  were  thinned  out  with  a 
hoe,  a  laborious  task,  so  as  to  leave  two  plants  about  a  foot 
apart,  and,  until  the  crop  was  ready  to  pick,  the  ground  was 
constantly  hoed  or  stirred  every  twenty  days.  Picking,  a 
long  and  tedious  rather  than  laborious  occupation,  consumed 
months,  and  when  it  was  over  the  field  gang  began  to  break 
stalks  and  plow  again  the  old  field  or  to  clear  new  fields  of 
weeds  and  underbrush.  The  simplicity  of  the  work,  the  small 
number  and  rudimentary  character  of  the  tools  needed,  the 
constant  but  not  exhausting  labor  all  the  year  round,  the 
profitableness  of  organizing  labor  on  a  large  scale  and  of 
performing  simultaneously  the  same  task  by  great  gangs  of 
slaves,  all  made  the  cotton-culture  ideally  fitted  for  the  use 


THE  TWO  DIVERGING  SECTIONS  243 

of  forced  labor.  The  expense  of  maintaining  slaves  in  com 
parative  comfort  was  small  in  a  warm  climate  where  housing, 
fuel,  and  heavy  clothing  were  not  essential,  and  where  the 
vegetable  food  abundantly  provided  by  nature  formed  an 
important  part  of  the  negroes'  diet. 

Cotton,  however,  rapidly  exhausted  the  land,  and  even  vir 
gin  soil  after  two  or  three  years'  cropping  yielded  a  per 
ceptibly  smaller  return.  Since  manure  and  fertilizers  were 
expensive  and  little  understood  and  since  new  land  was  plenti 
ful,  it  became  customary  to  abandon  a  field  after  a  few  years 
and  move  the  gang  of  slaves  to  a  new  scene  of  operations. 
From  this  grew  a  tendency  towards  large  plantations  of  thou 
sands  of  acres  where  several  shifts  of  operations  could  be 
made  on  the  owner's  territory,  without  leaving  the  general 
neighborhood,  and  then  permit  a  return  to  the  first  field, 
which  would  have  lain  fallow  long  enough  to  recover  its  fer 
tility.  The  profits,  too,  were  indubitably  greater  from  farm 
ing  on  a  large  scale  and  great  gangs  of  slaves  owned  by  com 
paratively  few  men  were  soon  producing  the  bulk  of  the  cot 
ton  crop. 

The  extraordinary  profit  in  cultivating  the  richest  bottom 
lands  compared  to  the  more  moderate  returns  from  cropping 
the  uplands  promptly  sent  the  more  adventurous  and  am 
bitious  into  new  districts  and  caused  the  rapid  growth  after 
1830  of  the  territory  along  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  A  very  large 
superficial  area  was  at  once  occupied:  the  land  sales  in  the 
five  Gulf  States  in  1834  aggregated  nearly  three  million  acres ; 
and  in  both  1835  and  1836,  over  five  million  acres.  The  rush 
of  capital  to  the  district  was  equally  marked;  the  number  of 
slaves  owned  there  increased  86%  in  the  decade  after  1830, 
while  the  production  of  cotton  increased  163%. 

From  this  expansion  flowed  results  of  consequence.  The 
preponderance  of  slaves  and  of  wealth  shifted  from  the  At 
lantic  coast  to  the  Gulf  States.  In  1790,  Maryland  and  Vir 
ginia  had  owned  three-fifths  of  all  the  slaves  in  the  country; 
by  1840  about  two-thirds  of  the  slaves  had  migrated  to  the 
Gulf  States,  and  one-half  of  the  total  number  were  absolutely 


244  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

dependent  on  the  cotton-culture.  By  1850,  nearly  80%  of  the 
total  number  of  slaves  were  in  the  cotton  States.  The  value 
of  a  good  field-hand  had  risen  from  $200  in  1778  to  $600  in 
1836.  Indeed,  compared  to  cotton,  tobacco,  the  staple  crop  of 
Virginia  and  Kentucky,  was  not  profitable  enough  to  re 
tain  the  slaves  in  the  district,  while  in  Tennessee  and  Mis 
souri  the  profit  of  using  slaves  for  agriculture  was  in  no  way 
comparable  to  that  of  selling  them  to  the  cotton-planters. 
Practically,  the  enormous  success  of  the  cotton-culture  in  the 
Gulf  States  and  the  consequent  high  price  of  slaves  made  it 
more  profitable  for  the  border  States  to  breed  slaves  for  the 
Southern  fields  than  to  cultivate  any  crop  themselves.  "Vir 
ginia  is,  in  fact,"  wrote  a  Southern  professor  in  1830,  "a 
negro-raising  State  for  other  States."  Cotton  thus  not  only 
perpetuated  slavery  in  the  cotton-belt  where  the  slaves  could 
be  profitably  used  for  the  actual  production  of  the  staple; 
but  it  perpetuated  it  in  the  border  States  where  it  made  the 
slave  himself  a  marketable  and  valuable  commodity.  "It  is 
believed,"  said  Henry  Clay  in  1829,  "that  nowhere  in  the 
farming  portion  of  the  United  States,  would  slave  labor  be 
generally  employed,  if  the  proprietor  were  not  tempted  to 
raise  slaves  by  the  high  price  of  the  Southern  markets  which 
keeps  it  up  in  his  own." 

Certainly,  too,  the  cotton-culture  made  the  South  essen 
tially  agricultural  and  essentially  an  agricultural  community 
of  one  crop.  As  years  went  on,  the  amount  of  food  raised 
proportionately  declined,  the  amount  of  manufactured  goods, 
even  under  the  most  liberal  interpretation  of  that  term,  was 
so  very  small  that  the  cotton  States  practically  depended  on 
the  North,  the  West,  or  Europe  for  literally  everything  neces 
sary  for  life.  Other  industry  than  cotton-culture  and  all  sorts 
of  manufactures  were  dwarfed,  discouraged,  or  prevented  from 
developing.  Where  in  1810  the  total  value  of  manufactured 
goods  south  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line  compared  to  their  value 
north  of  that  line  had  been  about  one-half,  it  was  by  1840  only 
one-third,  and  had  sunk  by  1850  to  one-fifth.  Some  growth 
there  was,  but  relatively  to  the  growth  of  manufactures  at  the 


THE  TWO  DIVERGING  SECTIONS  245 

North,  the  South  suffered  an  actual  decline.  The  two  sections 
were  developing  in  different  directions  and  certainly  those 
geographical  and  geological  conditions,  which  made  the  cotton- 
culture  so  profitable  in  the  South  and  which  forced  the  North 
into  manufacturing  and  varied  industry,  are  mainly  re 
sponsible  for  the  contrast  which  plainly  existed  between  them 
in  1860. 

A  Southern  historian  has  made  a  careful  study  of  the  con 
dition  of  Alabama  in  1850.  Out  of  750,000  people,  there  were 
330,000  slaves,  owned  by  30,000  men,  that  is,  by  about  seven 
per  cent  of  the  white  population.  About  three-fourths  of 
the  total  number  of  slaves,  with  nearly  that  same  proportion 
of  the  land,  were  owned  by  less  than  10,000  white  men,  from 
whose  plantations  came  the  great  bulk  of  the  cotton  crop. 
The  profits  can  be  guessed  from  the  fact  that  the  exports  of 
the  State  were  valued  at  ten  million  dollars  annually  while 
the  imports  were  under  a  million.  To  New  England  and  to 
Europe,  the  State  sent  cotton;  from  the  Northwest  via  the 
Mississippi  and  the  Gulf  she  drew  bread  and  meat.  Some 
75,000  whites  and  as  many  negroes  derived  a  livelihood  from 
manufactures,  banking,  and  the  professions.  Until  just  be 
fore  the  Civil  War  there  was  no  attempt  at  an  organized 
public-school  system.  Alabama  was  a  State  of  small  towns 
and  villages,  of  scattered  plantations,  with  no  large  cities 
and  little  if  any  community  life  in  the  broadest  sense.  The 
figures  given  by  the  census  of  1850  for  the  South  as  a  whole 
prove  theso  conditions  typical.  There  were  347,525  slave 
holders  in  the  South,  and  something  over  three  millions  of 
slaves.  "Of  the  large  planters  owning  more  than  fifty  slaves, 
whose  elegance,  luxury,  and  hospitality  are  recited  in  tales  of 
travelers,  over  whose  estates  and  lives  has  shone  the  luster  of 
romance  and  poetry,  there  were  less  than  eight  thousand/' 

So  striking  and  important  a  change  in  the  aspect  of 
slavery,  in  its  geographical  extent  and  its  economic  position, 
naturally  provoked  both  North  and  South  a  vigorous  and 
eager  discussion  of  its  cause,  its  methods,  its  morals,  its  ex 
pediency,  and  its  justifiability.  Societies  for  the  abolition  of 


246  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

slavery  or  for  its  limitation  were  old  in  America,  had  been 
common  both  North  and  South  in  the  decade  following  1789 
and  in  that  following  the  commercial  depression  of  1816 ;  but 
the  vital  changes  in  the  position  and  importance  of  slavery, 
together  with  the  general  intellectual  ferment  which  produced 
as  dissimilar  movements  as  the  Sunday-school,  the  Mormon 
church,  temperance  and  women's  rights  societies,  roused  a 
section  of  the  Northern  people  to  agitate  against  slavery  and 
led  to  the  formation  of  a  new  type  of  Abolition  and  Anti- 
slavery  societies  by  a  new  group  of  leaders,  of  whom  the  most 
remarkable  were  Garrison,  Parker,  and  Phillips.  Their 
propaganda,  which  seems  to  modern  investigators  to  have 
contributed  little  to  the  outbreak  of  the  War  in  1861,  did 
cause  a  searching  of  consciences  and  in  particular  of  history, 
the  Scriptures,  and  the  census.  "What  was  the  economic 
status  of  slavery;  was  it  profitable;  was  it  fair,  equitable, 
just,  ethical,  moral;  was  it  cruel,  was  it  as  good  for  the  slave 
as  for  the  master?  The  discussion  was  carried  on  by  both 
parties  with  a  furious  intensity,  with  the  uncritical  use  of  so- 
called  "facts,"  and  with  that  sentiment  and  prejudice  which 
are  so  certain  to  accompany  the  political  discussion  of  any 
moral  issue. 

While  it  is  hardly  profitable  to-day  to  consider  the  detailed 
arguments  advanced  by  either  side,  it  may  be  briefly  pointed 
out  that  the  chief  difference  seems  to  have  lain  in  the  fact 
that  the  Southerners  lived  with  the  negro  and  treated  slavery 
as  an  essentially  practical  economic  question,  while  the  North 
ern  men,  by  reason  of  their  lack  of  actual  contact  with 
slavery,  were  able  to  look  upon  it  with  a  certain  detachment 
and  to  apply  to  its  difficulties  moral  and  ethical  theories 
drawn  chiefly  from  their  own  widely  different  practical  ex 
perience.  The  planter  believed  that  cotton  could  not  be 
grown  without  negroes  and  knew  that  history  as  well  as  the 
Scriptures  provided  no  other  solution  of  the  problem  raised 
by  the  juxtaposition  of  a  superior  and  an  inferior  race  ex 
cept  slavery.  If  any  individuals  then  alive  were  to  blame  for 
the  existence  of  slavery  at  the  South,  he  felt  some  share  of  the 


THE  TWO  DIVERGING  SECTIONS  247 

blame  ought  to  be  borne  by  the  New  Englanders  whose  for 
tunes  had  originally  been  based  on  the  rum,  molasses,  and 
slave-trade  during  the  colonial  times.  That  cruel  treatment 
of  slaves  occurred,  he  was  willing  to  admit,  but  he  claimed 
that  on  the  whole  slavery  at  the  South  in  1850  was  as  humane 
and  considerate  as  it  had  ever  been  anywhere.  Northern 
opinion  more  and  more  came  to  lay  stress  upon  the  moral  and 
ethical  issue,  upon  the  claim  that  any  slavery  anywhere  was 
of  itself  wrong,  inhuman,  and  cruel.  It  pointed  out  that  the 
trend  of  human  development  had  been  clearly  toward  the 
emancipation  of  the  individual,  and  that  the  enlightened 
opinion  of  Western  Europe  in  1850  regarded  the  institution 
with  abhorrence  and  had  everywhere  abolished  it.  Both 
sides  employed  many  other  arguments  and  illustrations  whose 
truth  was  stoutly  challenged  by  their  opponents. 

The  trouble  about  the  argument  was  that  the  truth  on  one 
side  did  not  offset  or  answer  the  truth  on  the  other.  The 
Southerner,  quoting  history  and  the  Scriptures,  declined  to 
listen  to  what  he  was  told  was  the  moral  sense  of  the  world. 
Nor  was  the  claim  that  slavery  in  the  South  was  in  general 
humane  and  that  no  individuals  then  alive  were  in  any  way 
to  blame  for  its  existence,  at  all  satisfactory  to  the  excited 
Abolitionists  who  declaimed  against  it  as  a  wrong  in  itself, 
whose  very  existence  proved  it  wrong.  After  the  dark  days 
of  the  Reconstruction,  it  is  hard  to  convince  many  sincere 
men  that  most  negroes  were  not  happier  and  better  cared 
for  under  slavery  than  they  have  been  since  under  freedom. 
In  fact,  the  South  raised  the  issue  of  expediency:  how  could 
we  or  can  we  do  otherwise.  The  real  difficulty  was  the  ex 
istence  of  millions  whose  actual  ignorance  and  incapacity 
made  them  economic  slaves,  literally  unable  to  care  for  them 
selves,  and  not  to  be  made  capable  and  industrious  by  fiat. 
To  this  the  Northern  men  replied  that  slavery  simply  meant 
the  perpetuation  of  this  situation  by  making  it  legally,  eco 
nomically,  and  socially  impossible  for  the  children  to  rise 
above  the  position  their  fathers  and  grandfathers  had  occu 
pied.  It  was  the  clash  between  present  and  future  expe- 


248  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

diency,  a  choice  between  the  probable  evils  of  emancipation 
with  which  men  then  alive  must  cope,  or  the  postponement 
of  the  remedy  for  the  evils  of  slavery  to  a  future  time.  If 
we  confine  ourselves  strictly  to  the  point  of  view  of  1850,  we 
shall  be  likely  to  agree  that  humane,  sensible,  honest  men 
might  find  much  that  seemed  cogent  and  convincing  in  either 
argument  and  be  able  consistently  to  espouse  that  side  with 
ardor. 

Meanwhile,  north  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line  and  of  the 
Ohio  River,  in  the  districts  popularly  known  as  the  North 
and  the  West,  an  extremely  different  type  of  social  eco 
nomic  structure  was  growing  apace.  Even  before  the  Revo 
lution,  a  difference  in  development  between  the  North  and 
South  had  been  remarked  by  casual  travelers,  and  by  the 
inauguration  of  Jackson  the  contrast  was  striking;  but 
the  following  decades  saw  a  truly  stupendous  growth 
in  the  North  of  diversified  industry  and  in  the  West 
of  more  intensive  scientific  agriculture,  whose  reaction 
upon  the  social  and  political  life  of  the  community  was  ex 
ceedingly  significant.  It  was  not  so  much  an  increase  in  the 
output  of  Northern  factories  and  Western  farms  which  at 
tracted  attention,  though  the  doubling  of  the  wheat  and  corn 
crops  and  of  the  production  of  raw  iron  and  the  trebling  of 
the  value  of  manufactured  woolens  and  cottons  were  suffi 
ciently  interesting  facts.  The  normally  rapid  increase  of  the 
population,  plus  steady  immigration,  necessarily  meant  the  ap 
plication  of  more  hands  to  the  soil,  enormous  sales  of  land, 
more  acres  under  actual  cultivation,  and  hence  ensured  a  great 
increase  in  total  production.  The  remarkable  fact  was  the 
undoubted  gain  in  efficiency,  the  proportionally  greater  return 
from  the  investment  of  capital  and  labor  than  ever  before; 
the  increasing  variety  of  the  output;  the  rapid  rise  of  new 
industries,  and  the  steady  development  of  a  home  market  for 
home  products  as  well  as  the  manufacture  of  domestic  prod 
ucts  to  supply  the  home  demand.  The  North  was  not  only 
gaining  on  the  South  from  the  more  rapid  natural  increase 
of  the  white  population ;  it  was  gaining  immensely  by  immigra- 


THE  TWO  DIVERGING  SECTIONS  249 

tion  year  by  year,  especially  after  1850 ;  and  it  was  utilizing 
more  of  its  natural  resources  more  skilfully  and  adequately 
than  was  the  South. 

This  new  efficiency  was  largely  due  to  improved  methods  and 
to  the  invention  of  new  machinery  to  perform  the  manual  labor 
for  which  it  was  impossible  to  procure  hands  enough  on  the 
Western  farms.  The  cast-iron  plow,  the  mowing-machine, 
the  horse-rake,  the  reaping-  and  threshing-machines,  the  horse- 
cultivators  and  seed-sowers,  all  of  which  were  in  use  by  1840 
and  all  of  which  had  by  1850  become  practically  universal  in 
the  West,  were  enabling  a  few  men  to  do  the  work  of  a  hundred 
hand  laborers.  And  the  North  found  that  the  increased  output 
of  raw  iron,  the  better  pig  iron  produced  by  the  new  process 
of  smelting  with  anthracite  coal  provided  the  material  out  of 
which  busy  hands  in  Northern  factories  could  form  the  ma 
chines  needed  by  the  West.  Then,  too,  as  the  years  passed, 
improvements  upon  the  old  spinning-  and  weaving-machinery, 
the  sewing-machine,  changes  in  factory  organization,  cheaper 
machines  due  to  cheaper  iron  and  cheaper  transportation,  in 
creased  the  proportionate  output  from  the  factories  and  re 
duced  the  cost  of  production. 

More  people  to  be  reached,  living  on  a  constantly  greater  area 
of  land ;  more  produce  to  be  moved,  more  markets  demanding 
it,  required  and  secured  a  tremendous  improvement  in  the 
facilities  of  transportation.  In  1825,  the  Erie  Canal  connected 
the  Great  Lakes  with  the  Mohawk  and  the  Hudson  Rivers,  and 
was  soon  linked  to  a  network  of  canals  through  the  low  water 
shed  separating  the  Ohio  River  system  from  the  Lake  system. 
By  1840  grain  traveled  a  thousand  miles  to  the  Eastern  States 
more  cheaply  and  expeditiously  than  it  could  have  been  moved 
a  hundred  miles  a  decade  earlier.  A  vast  acreage  of  land 
hitherto  inacessible  became  available  and  to  it  flocked  the  am 
bitious.  Soon  canal  lines  were  supplanted  by  the  rapid  growth 
after  1840  of  railroad  trunk  lines  which  made  transportation 
of  all  bulky  goods  still  cheaper  and  greatly  fostered  the  rapid 
development  of  diversified  industry.  Cheap  iron  of  constantly 
better  grade  made  possible  better  engines,  larger  cars,  stronger 


250  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

rails,  and  enabled  the  railroads  to  haul  longer  trains  of  larger 
cars,  each  with  heavier  loads,  in  less  time  at  constantly  dimin 
ishing  cost.  As  transportation  became  cheaper,  districts  were 
able  to  send  grain  to  market  which  had  never  before  been  able 
to  compete  and  were  consequently  able  to  afford  manufactured 
goods  for  the  first  time.  The  increased  supply  of  food  enabled 
men  in  the  East  hitherto  dependent  on  local  supply  to  abandon 
the  farm  for  the  factory  and  produce  the  articles  the  West 
demanded.  Yet,  as  food  and  clothes  grew  cheaper  because  of 
the  improved  process  and  the  development  of  transportation, 
the  profit  to  the  individual  seemed  to  increase  on  each  trans 
action,  and  the  bushel  of  corn  bought  more  manufactured 
articles,  and  strange  to  say  a  yard  of  cloth  or  a  pig  of  iron 
bought  more  corn.  It  was  as  if  some  magician  had  waved 
his  wand  and  bade  them  all  make  one  another  rich. 

As  the  economic  fabric  grew  in  size,  it  developed  in  strength 
and  complexity.  Corporations  of  all  sorts  were  formed;  by 
1860  a  goodly  number  of  labor  unions  attempting  organi 
zation  on  a  national  scale  had  appeared.  Particularly  evi 
dent  and  gratifying  were  the  increasing  number  of  banks,  the 
swelling  volume  of  deposits,  and  the  extension  of  credit  facil 
ities  in  the  East.  The  amount  of  capital  seeking  invest 
ment  had  never  been  so  great  and  proved  the  unquestioned 
soundness  of  the  country's  development.  Exchange  through 
London  for  trade  between  the  States  was  long  obsolete,  and 
the  banking  centers  were  really  capable  of  handling  all  do 
mestic  business  transactions.  The  complexity  of  the  eco 
nomic  life  of  the  North,  the  proportion  of  skilled  workmen, 
the  variety  of  industries,  as  well  as  the  stability  of  the 
credit  structure,  were  to  be  of  the  utmost  consequence  in 
the  waging  of  the  Civil  "War.  Most  significant  of  all,  the 
new  development  depended  upon  cooperation  and  was  profit 
able  in  proportion  to  the  efficiency  of  that  collective  effort. 
This  the  North  clearly  saw.  In  the  South,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  individual  was  still  isolated  and  was  either  un 
conscious  of  the  greater  possibilities  of  a  more  complex  social 
life  or  hindered  by  adverse  conditions  from  developing  them. 


THE  TWO  DIVERGING  SECTIONS  251 

In  the  social  structure,  too,  occurred  striking  changes  be 
tween  1840  and  1860,  utterly  transforming  the  aspect  of 
Northern  society.  The  population  not  only  doubled  but  was 
able  to  remain  practically  upon  the  same  area  which  had 
supported  the  previous  generation.  In  earlier  decades,  no 
more  people  could  live  together  in  a  town  or  city  than  the 
district  could  support,  unless  the  ease  of  water  transportation 
and  the  nearness  of  a  great  source  of  supply  enabled  them 
to  import  their  food.  But  as  the  efficiency  of  the  new  farm 
ing  by  machinery  enabled  a  part  to  feed  the  whole,  and  as 
the  efficiency  of  the  new  factories  made  the  labor  of  a  part 
sufficient  to  clothe  the  whole,  a  larger  proportion  of  the  com 
munity  than  ever  before  was  free  to  live  where  it  pleased 
and  could  rely  upon  the  railroads  to  supply  its  wants.  Thus 
was  made  possible  a  new  type  of  social  unit,  the  modern 
industrial  city,  devoted  perhaps  to  the  production  of  a  few 
articles  and  relying  upon  the  outside  world  for  all  else. 
Concomitantly,  the  cheapness  of  wood  with  which  to  build 
houses,  of  coal  to  heat  them,  of  gas  to  light  them,  of  sewers 
to  drain  them,  of  water-works  to  supply  fresh  water,  made 
the  rapid  growth  of  cities  possible  and  freed  these  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  people,  huddled  upon  the  same  spot,  from 
the  old  menaces  of  the  plague  and  the  scurvy.  The  com 
munity  had  time  to  build  cities  and  public  works,  and  to 
supply  the  multifold  new  economic  wants  which  community 
life  in  cities  promptly  created.  It  was  becoming  wealthy, 
beginning  to  have  traces  of  a  leisure  class,  able  to  afford 
systematically  to  develop  its  tastes  in  a  variety  of  directions 
not  essential  to  existence  but  imperative  for  culture  and 
education.  Theaters,  magazines,  books  multiplied;  the  opera 
and  concerts  became  popular.  Education  received  more  care 
ful  attention  and  a  considerable  part  of  the  swelling  profits 
were  wisely  invested  in  school  buildings  and  equipment,  and 
the  children  could  be,  and  were,  left  longer  in  school  than 
ever  before.  For  those  adults  whose  early  opportunities  had 
not  been  great,  the  lyceum  and  the  lecture  courses  provided 
a  variety  of  informing  and  instructive  material. 


252  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

In  the  Mississippi  and  Ohio  Valleys,  the  gain  in  population 
and  wealth  was  proportionately  more  rapid  than  in  the  North, 
and  for  the  first  time  a  truly  complex  social  structure  began 
to  develop  west  of  the  mountains.  Naturally,  it  centered 
round  the  lines  of  communication  with  the  East;  along  the 
great  highway  from  New  York  through  the  Hudson  and 
Mohawk  Valleys,  along  the  shore  of  the  Lakes  to  "the  North 
west,''  as  the  States  northwest  of  Chicago  were  then  called. 
Naturally,  it  was  most  striking  at  the  various  gateways  and 
termini,  New  York,  Albany,  Buffalo,  the  Lake  cities,  Chicago. 
New  York  and  Chicago,  the  eastern  and  western  termini  of 
the  railroad  trunk  lines,  of  course  benefited  most.  The  older 
centers  in  the  West,  Cincinnati  and  St.  Louis,  had  owed  their 
prominence  to  their  control  of  the  river  routes  to  the  South 
and  were  therefore  outside  the  new  field  of  development.  A 
shift  in  the  balance  of  population  and  wealth  took  place  be 
tween  the  North  and  West,  much  to  the  advantage  of  the 
West  as  a  whole,  and  with  it  came  a  concomitant  shift  of 
the  balance  of  population  and  wealth  in  the  West  from  the 
Mississippi  and  Ohio  River  system  to  the  Great  Lakes  and 
the  upper  Mississippi.  And  Henry  Clay  had  predicted  in 
1824  that  Zanesville,  Ohio,  would  become  the  emporium  of 
the  West! 

Why  the  only  sectional  line  in  American  history,  which 
ever  threatened  to  become  permanent,  should  have  begun  with 
the  old  boundary  line  run  by  Mason  and  Dixon  between  Mary 
land  and  Pennsylvania  and  have  continued  along  the  Ohio 
River  and  then  have  passed  northwest  through  Missouri  is 
one  of  the  most  fascinating  questions  of  American  history, 
and  probably  does  not  admit  of  a  wholly  determinate  an 
swer. 

It  is,  however,  a  remarkable  and  suggestive  fact  that  the 
southern  line  of  the  great  ice  sheet,  which  at  one  time  oc 
cupied  the  whole  northern  half  of  this  continent  followed 
very  nearly  Mason  and  Dixon 's  line,  then  followed  the  Ohio 
River  for  half  its  course,  passed  across  Indiana  and  Illinois 
leaving  a  sizable  section  south  of  it  (where  " before  the 


THE  TWO  DIVERGING  SECTIONS  253 

War"  many  slaves  hired  from  Kentucky  were  at  work  and 
which  were  pro-slavery  districts  in  most  elections),  and  then 
turned  sharply  towards  the  northwest,  leaving  most  of  Mis 
souri  to  the  south  of  it.  The  result  of  the  existence  of  this 
great  ice  sheet  and  of  its  melting  was  to  create  north  of 
this  line  a  soil  richer  in  chemical  elements  and  hence  more 
fertile  than  that  south  of  it.  Much  land  south  of  this  line 
is  still  "dead  soil"  and  only  in  the  river  bottoms,  filled  with 
silt  brought  by  the  Mississippi  from  the  upper  valley,  is 
the  soil  extremely  fertile.  The  southern  half  of  the  United 
States  is  not  capable  of  the  same  variety  of  crops  as  the 
northern.  Closely  following  this  same  line  of  the  ice  sheet 
is  the  isotherm  of  an  average  annual  temperature  of  60 
degrees,  the  belt  just  north  averaging  50  to  60  degrees,  and 
that  just  south,  60  to  70  degrees.  But  the  peculiarity  of 
America  is  that  while  the  lines  of  winter  temperature  slope 
southward  and  give  the  country  between  the  Great  Lakes 
and  the  Gulf  the  range  of  temperature  found  in  Europe 
between  the  North  Cape  and  the  Sahara  Desert,  the  summer 
lines  expand  in  both  directions  and  produce  greater  extremes 
of  temperature  in  the  northern  half  than  in  the  southern 
half  or  in  European  countries  of  the  same  latitude.  The 
temperature  of  the  northern  belt,  like  its  soil,  is  far  more 
varied  than  that  of  the  southern  half,  where  only  those  crops 
can  be  profitably  grown  that  will  thrive  in  a  summer  temper 
ature  of  80  degrees  and  above.  In  addition,  the  average 
annual  rainfall,  so  important  to  agriculture,  is  from  20  to 
40  inches  in  the  belt  just  north  of  the  line  of  the  ice  sheet, 
and  from  40  to  60  inches  in  the  whole  district  south  of  it. 
More  than  60  degrees  annual  temperature  and  more  than 
40  inches  of  rainfall  is  fatal  to  the  profitable  cultivation  of 
many  agricultural  products,  and  it  is  in  the  belt  just  north 
of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line  and  of  the  Ohio  River,  that  soil, 
temperature,  and  rainfall  create  the  most  favorable  con 
ditions  for  agriculture.  Consequently,  the  bulk  of  the  most 
highly  developed  land,  and  nearly  all  the  wheat  and  corn 
land  will  be  found  to-day,  as  in  1860,  north  of  the  line. 


254  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Soil,  temperature,  and  rainfall  prevent  the  growth  of  wheat 
and  corn  at  a  profit  in  the  South  and  do  not  permit  the  rais 
ing  in  the  North  of  staple  crops  like  cotton,  tobacco,  rice, 
and  indigo,  which  can  be  profitably  grown  with  slave  labor. 
The  North  was  prevented  by  Nature,  not  by  the  superior 
moral  and  ethical  fiber  of  its  people,  from  developing  slavery 
as  an  institution.  These  conditions  were  true  in  1606 ;  they 
are  still  true  in  1914:  they  are  fundamental  conditions  which 
have  shaped  and  always  will  shape  economic  and  institutional 
life  in  this  country. 

One  more  fact  is  of  consequence.  As  the  great  sheet  of 
ice  melted,  the  Ohio  and  Missouri  Eivers  were  formed  by 
the  streams  flowing  along  its  edges  into  the  cleft  of  the 
valley ;  there  they  united  with  the  Mississippi,  cutting  a  deep 
channel  between  the  low  hills  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  They 
flowed,  however,  through  a  vast  plain  whose  angle  of  in 
clination  was  small,  and,  except  at  times  of  flood,  their  prog 
ress  was  leisurely  and  wandering.  In  this  country  there 
would  be  little  water-power  for  manufacturing.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  mountains  and  rocky  northern  country  created 
swift  rivers  with  many  falls  and  rapids.  All  through  New 
York  and  New  England  the  streams  hurrying  down  the  steep 
hillsides  and  draining  great  mountain  valleys  made  possible 
the  water-power  upon  which  the  early  factories  depended. 
The  use  of  steam  as  the  chief  motive  power  in  manufactur 
ing  is  very  recent,  and  is  wholly  dependent  upon  coal  as  a 
fuel.  The  water-power  in  the  rivers  enabled  the  north  to 
develop  industries.  The  same  rocky  soil  and  mountainous 
formation  that  made  the  rivers  numerous  and  swift  made 
agriculture  on  a  large  scale  difficult  and  unprofitable  and 
influenced  the  inhabitants  to  follow  other  occupations.  The 
climatic  and  geographical  conditions,  far  more  than  inherited 
tendencies  or  natural  ambition,  explain  the  rapid  develop 
ment  of  manufactures  in  the  North  in  the  half-century  pre 
ceding  the  Civil  War.  The  lack  of  water-power  and  the 
profitableness  of  great  staple  crops  made  the  South  pre 
dominantly  an  agricultural  country. 


THE  TWO  DIVERGING  SECTIONS  255 

Similarly  the  geographical  and  economic  fabric  influenced 
decisively  the  political  institutions  of  each  section.  The  cold 
winters  in  the  North  made  agriculture  impossible  for  many 
months,  necessitated  the  storing  up  of  provisions  and  led 
the  people  living  inland  to  huddle  together  for  company, 
for  sharing  the  food  and  fuel  in  time  of  scarcity,  and  for 
defense  against  the  Indians  and  French.  The  shipping  and 
fishing  industries  similarly  encouraged  the  formation  and 
growth  of  towns.  These  factors  naturally  explain  the  for 
mation  of  closely  knit  cooperative  centralized  institutions  in 
the  North;  it  was  convenient  and  expedient  so  to  live.  In 
the  South,  it  was  as  clearly  convenient  and  expedient  to 
live  otherwise.  Tobacco  in  colonial  times,  like  cotton  after 
the  Revolution,  required  vast  areas  of  new  land,  for  the 
crops  quickly  exhausted  the  soil  and  the  science  of  fertili 
zation  was  not  then  understood.  Each  planter  owned,  there 
fore,  a  tract  equivalent  to  a  whole  New  England  town 
ship,  in  the  middle  of  which  he  usually  lived  with  a  few 
white  overseers  and  a  large  gang  of  slaves.  He  tilled  only 
a  part  of  his  estate  each  year  and  was  constantly  moving 
from  one  field  to  another.  Summer  and  winter  were  alike 
to  him  so  far  as  food,  shelter,  and  communication  went; 
there  was  nothing  to  make  him  dependent  on  other  planters, 
or  to  make  close  political  association  necessary.  The  great 
plantations  were  therefore  organized  into  counties  in  the 
loosest  fashion.  The  necessary  functions  of  government  were 
reduced  to  a  minimum  by  the  small  number  of  whites  and 
their  comparative  isolation.  The  common  business  was 
largely  judicial  or  financial  and  could  be  performed  with 
ease  by  one  or  two  men.  Only  on  the  plantations  was  ex 
tensive  authority  in  daily  use;  the  population  which  most 
needed  to  be  controlled,  tried,  fined,  and  legislated  about  was 
not  the  planters  but  the  slaves,  and  it  was  inevitable  that 
nearly  plenary  authority  should  be  vested  in  the  master. 
Centralized  control  was  a  physical  impossibility :  each  planter 
must  govern  his  own  plantation  and  receive  from  the  county 
aid  and  assistance  in  cases  of  special  difficulty.  The  State 


256  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

would  settle  disputes  between  planters;  it  could  not  under 
take  to  govern  the  community  for  the  planters. 

In  the  seventy  years  following  the  adoption  of  the  Consti 
tution  the  North  developed  industry;  the  South,  cotton;  the 
North  became  wholly  free;  the  South  chiefly  slave.  Where 
in  the  North,  something  like  centralized  government  was  a 
necessity  and  the  object  of  cooperation  was  to  secure  a  posi 
tive  result,  in  the  South  the  best  government  was,  as  Jeffer 
son  said,  the  one  which  did  the  least,  which  interfered  only 
in  the  last  resort.  States'  rights  had  therefore  for  the 
Southerner  a  solid  foundation  in  the  experience  of  the  com 
munity.  The  benefits  of  union,  that  is  of  cooperation,  had 
to  the  Northern  man  an  equally  firm  basis  in  experience.  In 
the  North,  free  labor,  diversified  industry,  seemed  to  be  the 
very  price  of  existence;  in  the  South,  great  staple  crops 
grown  by  slaves  or  at  least  by  unfree  labor  seemed  equally 
inevitable.  To  the  Northern  man  slavery  was  an  abstraction, 
an  excrescence  on  the  life  of  the  community ;  to  the  Southern 
man,  it  was  as  necessary  as  the  soil.  That  in  another  part 
of  the  country  the  factors,  accepted  in  each  as  axiomatic, 
not  only  did  not  exist  but  would  have  been  positively  det 
rimental  to  the  successful  administration  of  public  and 
private  business,  neither  North  or  South  fully  realized. 

The  Civil  War  was  the  result  of  a  misunderstanding  be 
tween  honest,  sincere  men,  in  which  both  were  right  and 
both  were  wrong,  and,  it  is  far  truer  to  add,  in  which 
neither  could  be  either  right  or  wrong.  Each  did  what  the 
conditions  of  life  seemed  to  make  inevitable,  what  its  tradi 
tions  sanctioned,  and  its  ideals  counseled. 


XIX 

TEXAS  AND  THE  MEXICAN  WAR 

BY  1835,  the  profits  of  cotton-culture  were  clear  to  the  South 
ern  planters.  Apparently  the  market  was  exhaustless;  the 
amount  of  profit  obtainable  from  the  labor  of  slaves  on 
virgin  soil  in  the  river  bottoms  was  astounding;  unless  the 
land  most  profitable  to  cultivate  should  be  exhausted,  or 
the  supply  of  slaves  become  insufficient  to  work  it,  there 
seemed  literally  to  be  no  dreams  of  wealth  and  power  which 
might  not  be  realized.  For  the  time  being,  the  supply  of 
land  and  of  slaves  was  ample,  but  the  rapidity  with  which 
the  westward  movement  was  progressing  made  the  continu 
ation  of  the  same  rate  of  growth  improbable  unless  more  land 
could  be  obtained  than  was  available  in  1835.  That  the  same 
rate  of  growth  must  continue  seemed  to  Southerners  of  the 
time  an  axiom  whose  truth  was  too  apparent  to  be  disputed 
by  any  fair-minded  individual.  To  continue  it,  there  must 
be  more  land  and  more  slaves. 

The  territory  between  the  Alleghanies  and  the  Mississippi 
was  in  1835  already  organized  into  States,  the  lands  had 
been  allotted  to  private  individuals,  and  the  status  of  slavery 
had  been  decided  in  a  fashion  which  could  not  be  altered. 
To  the  north  of  the  Ohio  lay  the  vast  plains  called  the 
Northwest  Territory,  which  had  been  organized  by  the  famous 
Ordinance  of  1787,  with  a  prohibition  of  slavery  in  the  terri 
tories  and  States  to  be  organized  out  of  it.  By  1819,  Ohio, 
Indiana,  and  Illinois  had  been  admitted  as  free  States,  and 
the  type  of  soil,  the  rainfall,  and  the  climate  made  it  certain 
that  the  district  was  wholly  unfitted  for  the  growth  of  cot 
ton.  From  every  point  of  view,  all  the  land  north  of  the 
Ohio  was  unavailable. 

257 


258  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

The  territory  south  of  that  river  had  been  also  ceded  to  the 
Confederation  by  England  in  the  Treaty  of  1783,  but  without 
a  very  definite  agreement  concerning  the  southern  boundary. 
Kentucky  and  Tennessee  had  been  settled  from  Virginia  and 
North  Carolina  and  had  entered  the  Union  as  slave  States  in 
1792  and  1796  respectively.  The  ownership  of  a  district 
roughly  approximating  the  present  States  of  Alabama  and 
Mississippi  was,  however,  in  dispute  between  England  and 
Spain,  and  the  former  agreed  with  the  latter  that  if  she  could 
make  good  her  claim  against  the  United  States,  the  land  should 
be  hers.  Georgia  also  laid  claim  to  the  district  by  virtue  of 
her  colonial  charter.  The  difficulty  was  finally  settled  by 
treaties  in  which  the  United  States  bought  the  Spanish  claims 
to  the  whole  southern  part  of  the  United  States,  including 
Florida.  Mississippi  and  Alabama  had  already  been  settled 
by  Americans  and  were  indeed  admitted  as  States  before  the 
Treaty  of  1819  was  finally  ratified.  Save  Florida,  there  was 
no  land  left  east  of  the  Mississippi  and  south  of  the  Ohio 
which  slavery  had  not  already  formally  occupied  by  1820. 

There  were,  however,  in  the  Gulf  States  great  tracts  of  ex 
ceedingly  fertile  lands  in  the  hands  of  the  powerful  Indian 
confederacies  of  the  Creeks,  Cherokees,  and  Choctaws.  After 
the  breaking  of  solemn  treaties  and  unseemly  and  undignified 
quarrels,  which  very  nearly  provoked  armed  defiance  of  Fed 
eral  authority  by  Georgia,  the  Indians  were  expelled  from 
their  rich  fields,  and  by  1835  had  been  located  in  what  are 
now  Oklahoma  and  Indian  Territory.  Although  the  new  area 
thus  opened  to  cotton  was  large,  it  was  so  promptly  occupied 
that  before  1840,  all  the  best  cotton  land  south  of  the  Ohio  and 
east  of  the  Mississippi  had  again  been  allotted. 

As  early  as  1819  when  Missouri  and  Maine  simultane 
ously  applied  for  admission,  the  status  of  the  Louisiana 
Territory  was  seen  to  be  an  issue  of  the  first  importance.  The 
southernmost  part  had  become  a  slave  State  some  years  be 
fore;  it  was  natural  that  the  district  around  the  Missouri 
River  whither  the  rich  fur-trade  had  drawn  settlers  should  out 
strip  the  rest  of  Louisiana  in  growth  and  should  be  large 


TEXAS  AND  THE  MEXICAN  WAR  259 

enough  for  admission  as  a  State  when  the  rest  of  the  pur 
chase  was  scarcely  settled  at  all.  The  Compromise  of  1820 
admitted  Missouri  as  a  slave  State,  and,  while  prohibiting 
slavery  in  the  broad  plains  north  of  Missouri's  southern 
boundary  line,  36°  30',  obviously  left  the  river-bottoms  of 
Arkansas  for  future  expansion.  In  1820,  the  allotment  to 
the  Indians  of  land  south  of  36°  30'  was  not  foreseen  and 
the  Southerners  felt  that  they  had  amply  provided  for  all  the 
cotton  land  which  could  conceivably  be  needed  for  decades  to 
come.  In  fostering  this  feeling,  the  prevailing  dense  igno 
rance  of  western  geography  played  a  prominent  part.  The 
expedition  of  Lewis  and  Clark,  sent  by  Jefferson  to  inspect 
the  new  purchase,  and  the  accounts  of  trappers  and  hunters 
had  given  no  accurate  idea  of  how  much  land  there  was  to 
which  the  United  States  could  rightly  lay  claim  west  of  the 
Mississippi.  The  general  notion  that  it  was  practically  un 
limited  was  quite  satisfactory  to  most  men.  But  within 
fifteen  years,  Arkansas  was  demanding  admission  as  a  State ; 
the  Indians  had  been  assigned  the  rest  of  the  Louisiana  terri 
tory  west  of  Arkansas  and  south  of  the  Missouri  Compromise 
line;  and  the  development  of  the  cotton-culture  west  of  the 
great  river  was  clearly  proceeding  at  so  rapid  a  pace  that  the 
limitation  of  production  and  the  diminution  of  the  degree  of 
profit  hitherto  obtained  was  certain  unless  new  lands  could 
be  promptly  secured. 

The  obvious  direction  for  such  expansion  was  in  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico,  either  in  Cuba  and  the  islands  or  in  the  vast  do 
main  of  Texas,  contiguous  with  the  cotton  States,  along  the 
Gulf  between  the  Sabine  River  and  the  Rio  Grande.  About 
this  great  estate,  the  United  States  had  hitherto  cared  little; 
it  was  included  in  the  Louisiana  Purchase,  though  the  fact 
was  not  understood  in  1803 ;  it  was  therefore  left  outside  the 
boundaries  of  the  United  States  in  the  Treaty  of  1819  with 
Spain,  and  the  omission  aroused  little  comment  except  in  Mis 
souri.  Indeed,  few  supposed  we  had  a  just  claim  to  it  or  that 
it  was  of  any  particular  value.  The  efforts  of  the  South 
American  and  Central  American  colonies  of  Spain  to  obtain 


260  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

their  independence  about  1821  excited  much  sympathy  in  the 
United  States,  evoked  the  Monroe  Doctrine  and  practically 
their  protection  by  the  United  States  from  European  aggres 
sion.  With  equal  promptitude  appeared  arguments  in  favor 
of  the  annexation  of  one  or  more  of  them,  especially  of  Cuba 
and  Mexico,  to  the  latter  of  which  Spain  had  ceded  Texas. 
Several  attempts  to  annex  Cuba  and  buy  Texas  were  made  be 
fore  1830,  but  came  to  nothing.  Meanwhile,  several  thou 
sand  Americans  with  slaves  hurried  to  Texas  and  began  rais 
ing  cotton ;  at  least  two  attempts  were  made  by  Americans  to 
set  up  an  independent  republic  there;  and  their  determina 
tion  to  break  the  loose  tie  binding  the  territory  to  Mexico  was 
greatly  strengthened  by  the  emancipation  of  the  slaves  by  the 
Mexican  Constitution  of  1827.  After  several  failures,  the 
Americans  in  Texas  succeeded  in  establishing  their  independ 
ence  of  Mexico  in  1836  and  secured  recognition  from  the 
United  States  and  several  European  nations  the  following 
year. 

With  so  anomalous  a  status  they  were  by  no  means  satis 
fied  and  ardently  desired  annexation.  This,  the  discovery  by 
the  Southern  planters  of  the  rapid  exhaustion  of  available 
cotton  land  led  the  latter  to  support  with  might  and  main. 
The  scheme  was  defeated  in  1837.  Now  it  became  clear  to  the 
Southerners  that  Texas  as  an  independent  State  had  only  to 
begin  the  direct  importation  of  cheap  negroes  from  Africa 
to  sell  cotton  at  a  price  with  which  the  high  price  of  slaves 
in  the  United  States  and  the  abolition  of  the  slave  trade 
would  prevent  them  from  competing.  In  addition,  the  rapid 
exhaustion  of  the  virgin  soil  available  in  the  Gulf  States  made 
it  also  possible  that  the  profit  from  cotton  would  be  so  re 
duced  that  its  cultivation  in  Louisiana  and  Mississippi  might 
no  longer  be  profitable  at  all.  The  remedies  were  either  an 
nexation,  which  would  impose  permanently  upon  the  Texans 
the  same  restraints  to  which  the  Southerners  themselves  were 
subject,  or  the  repeal  of  the  constitutional  prohibition  against 
the  slave  trade. 

The   designs   of  the   Southerners   upon   Cuba   and   Texaa 


TEXAS  AND  THE  MEXICAN  WAR  261 

roused  the  suspicions  of  the  Northern  and  Western  men. 
The  anti-slavery  and  abolition  movements  were  becoming 
strong;  anti-slavery  petitions  poured  into  Congress,  where 
they  found  a  stanch  and  able  advocate  in  John  Quincy 
Adams.  What  agitation  and  insistence  had  not  been  able  to 
effect  in  Northern  minds,  the  obvious  trend  of  Southern  am 
bition  promptly  accomplished.  Was  it  after  all  right  to 
adopt  a  policy  for  the  wide  extension  and  development  of  an 
institution,  the  logic  for  whose  extension  was  by  no  means 
as  unanswerable  as  the  arguments  against  interfering  with  it 
where  it  already  existed  ?  Did  not  the  South  intend  to  create 
a  new  slave  empire  which  would  in  time  sweep  into  its  maw 
the  whole  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  whose  size  and  wealth  would 
endanger  the  free  States  in  the  North?  The  fact  that  the 
South  controlled  the  chief  medium  of  exchange  with  Europe — 
and  the  only  medium  since  the  destruction  of  the  prosperity  of 
the  English  West  Indian  Islands  by  the  abolition  of  slavery 
in  1833 — caused  the  Northern  members  of  Congress  to  realize 
that  the  commercial  situation  might  effectually  chain  their 
States  to  the  chariot  wheels  of  the  new  slave  empire  and  that 
it  behooved  them  to  look  well  before  they  sanctioned  its  de 
velopment.  But  the  fear,  which  seemed  at  the  time  well- 
founded,  of  the  annexation  of  Texas  by  England  or  France 
and  the  consequent  creation  there  of  a  rival  State  capable 
of  contesting  with  us  the  control  of  the  Gulf  and  of  the  con 
tinent,  carried  the  day.  In  1845,  Texas  was  annexed  by  a 
joint  resolution  of  the  two  Houses  of  Congress. 

The  boundaries  of  the  new  State  on  the  west  and  south  had 
not  yet  been  settled  with  Mexico  and  the  territory  claimed  by 
the  Texans, — a  broad  band  stretching  up  into  the  country  be 
tween  the  Nueces  River  and  the  Rio  Grande — was  of  im 
mense  size  and  probably  of  commensurate  value.  Its  cession 
by  Mexico  could  certainly  be  secured  by  a  little  show  of  force. 
The  latter  country  was  in  the  throes  of  an  internal  revolu 
tion  and  could  scarcely  resist.  War  was  declared  in  1846  and 
the  United  States  armies  soon  defeated  the  ill-equipped  and 
badly  disciplined  levies  of  Mexicans.  Webster  and  other 


262  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Northern  men  inveighed  hotly  against  the  war  as  unprovoked 
and  unjust  aggression,  and  only  in  the  South  was  popular 
approval  widespread  and  outspoken.  Charges  were  made 
that  the  President  attempted  to  buy  or  annex  the  whole  of 
Mexico  and  was  forced  to  renounce  his  plans  by  the  refusal 
of  England  and  France  to  countenance  the  scheme.  However 
this  may  have  been,  a  treaty  was  signed  in  1848  which  ceded 
to  the  United  States  the  enormous  territory  west  of  the  Rock 
ies,  south  of  Oregon  and  north  of  the  present  Mexican  bound 
ary  (except  a  tract  in  southern  Arizona  purchased  in  1853), 
— fully  a  quarter  of  the  present  area  of  the  United  States. 

At  about  this  same  time  were  concluded  treaties  with  Eng 
land  which  definitely  settled  the  northern  boundary,  between 
the  United  States  and  Canada,  nearly  the  whole  length  of 
which  was  in  dispute.  The  real  cause  of  the  difficulty  lay  in 
the  lack  of  accurate  information  about  the  topography  of  the 
interior  at  the  time  when  the  Treaty  of  1783  and  the  Loui 
siana  Purchase  of  1803  had  been  concluded.  In  the  Northwest, 
the  United  States  claimed  that  Maine  extended  almost  to  the 
St.  Lawrence  River,  while  the  English  declared  the  highlands 
mentioned  by  the  negotiators  were  far  to  the  south  and  east. 
In  the  West,  it  was  found  that  the  terms  of  the  Treaty  of  1783 
were  impossible  of  fulfilment,  and,  as  well,  that  much  land 
which  it  had  been  evidently  intended  should  belong  to  the 
United  States  was  outside  its  boundaries  and  that  other  land 
it  had  not  been  intended  to  have  was  its  property.  Still  fur 
ther  west,  beyond  the  Rockies,  was  the  great  valley  of  the 
Columbia  River,  which  both  England  and  the  United  States 
claimed  by  virtue  of  title  by  discovery,  and  parts  of  whose 
valley  had  been  already  occupied  by  trappers  and  settlers  of 
both  nations.  The  western  boundary  was  settled  first,  the 
parallel  of  the  Lake  of  the  Woods  being  accepted  as  far  as  the 
Rockies  and  a  joint  occupation  of  Oregon  agreed  upon.  In 
1842,  the  boundary  of  Maine  was  compromised,  and  in  1846 
Oregon  was  divided  by  continuing  the  49th  parallel  to  the 
Pacific. 

In  1848,  therefore,  an  enormous  accession  of  territory  had 


TEXAS  AND  THE  MEXICAN  WAR  263 

just  been  made  and  its  organization  and  status  became  a  burn 
ing  question  in  Congress.  Nor  were  the  issues  such  as  would 
permit  of  postponement.  The  demarcation  of  the  western 
boundary  of  Texas  was  necessary  in  order  to  establish  a  gov 
ernment  over  the  disputed  area,  which  was  already  occupied, 
and  in  which  the  Texans  had  immediately  begun  to  assert 
their  authority.  In  Oregon,  the  number  and  activity  of 
trappers  and  settlers,  the  immense  value  of  the  fur-trade,  as 
well  as  the  need  of  authority  of  some  sort  for  the  preserva 
tion  of  order,  made  prompt  action  in  providing  permanent  or 
ganization  no  less  imperative.  In  California,  gold  was  dis 
covered,  and  in  1849  a  rush  to  the  new  territory  ensued  of 
such  proportions  that  the  regulations  concerning  the  number 
of  inhabitants  required  for  admission  to  statehood  were  prac 
tically  met  at  once.  The  prospecting  stories  which  came  back 
were  amazing.  A  gold-seeker  died  from  starvation  and  ex 
posure;  his  partner  determined  to  give  up  as  soon  as  he  had 
buried  the  body ;  in  digging  the  grave  he  turned  up  a  nugget 
of  pure  gold  worth  $40,000.  A  tramp,  put  off  a  wagon-train 
because  he  had  not  paid  his  fare,  wandered  across  the  fields, 
and  literally  stumbled  over  a  nugget  worth  $2500.  The  idle, 
the  adventurous,  the  desperate  all  started  for  Eldorado  and 
formed  a  population  particularly  in  need  of  strong  govern 
ment. 

These  problems,  whose  solution  was  so  essential,  were  at 
once  discussed  in  the  light  of  previous  agitation  and  grouped 
themselves  with  other  grievances  of  the  North  and  of  the 
South.  The  satisfactory  decision  of  all  seemed  peculiarly 
difficult.  California,  already  clamoring  for  statehood,  pro 
posed  to  tolerate  no  negroes,  free  or  slave;  "California  for 
white  men"  was  the  slogan.  Even  the  descriptions  of  casual 
travelers  in  the  arid  plains  of  the  great  district  then  known 
as  New  Mexico  convinced  the  Southerners  that  cotton  could 
never  be  grown  there  and  that  the  profitable  use  of  slaves  there 
for  any  purpose  was  highly  problematical.  Apparently  the 
Mexican  War  had  been  worse  than  fruitless;  it  had  added 
enormous  reaches  of  free  territory  without  increasing  the 


264  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

available  cotton  land  at  all.  Again,  the  war  had  ostensibly 
been  fought  to  enforce  the  claims  of  Texas  to  the  Rio  Grande 
as  a  southern  boundary  and  its  success  was  assumed  by  the 
Texans  to  have  guaranteed  them  the  land  in  dispute.  The 
United  States,  however,  found  itself  heir  to  the  claims  of 
Mexico,  and,  when  Congress  began  to  realize  how  vast  an 
area  was  affected  by  the  Texan  claims  and  how  strong  the 
Mexican  case  had  been,  it  soon  assumed  the  extraordinary 
position  of  denying  the  rightfulness  of  the  claims  of  Texas 
to  establish  whose  rectitude  the  war  itself  had  been  fought. 
Here  too  the  issue  of  slavery  appeared.  If  the  territory  were 
adjudged  part  of  Texas,  it  would  at  once  become  slave  terri 
tory  forever;  if  it  were  left  a  part  of  New  Mexico,  Congress 
would  then  be  able  to  consider  its  status.  Strong  objections 
were  at  once  manifest  among  the  New  Englanders  to  any  set 
tlement  in  favor  of  Texas. 

Into  this  tangle  of  interests  and  prejudices  were  projected 
three  old  issues  on  which  the  North  was  becoming  evidently 
more  and  more  reluctant  to  allow  the  Southerners  their  way. 
The  argument  of  the  Abolitionists  had  done  much  to  rouse 
feeling  in  the  North,  but  had  produced  little  effect  compared 
with  the  sight  of  a  fugitive  slave  fleeing  from  his  master  and 
pursued  by  United  States  marshals.  If  he  was  so  happy  in 
slavery,  taunted  the  Abolitionists,  why  did  he  prefer  to  risk 
being  torn  to  pieces  by  bloodhounds  rather  than  stay  with  his 
1 '  dear  master  "  ?  If  the  masters  had  the  welfare  and  happiness 
of  the  slave  so  much  at  heart,  why  did  they  pursue  him  with 
hue  and  cry  the  moment  he  manifested  unmistakably  his  dis 
taste  for  slavery?  The  fact  that  the  negro  was  valuable  prop 
erty,  that  he  was  to  be  returned  as  a  strayed  or  stolen  horse, 
and  was  to  be  returned  to  forced  labor  under  the  lash  moved 
many  a  Northerner  to  expressions  of  pity  and  abhorrence 
whom  the  impassioned  utterances  of  Phillips  had  never 
stirred.  The  fugitive  was  to  him  a  living  illustration,  de 
posited  at  his  very  door,  of  the  evils  of  slavery.  The  co 
operation  of  the  Northern  communities  in  the  capture  and  re 
turn  of  fugitives  had  been  promised  in  all  colonial  agreements 


TEXAS  AND  THE  MEXICAN  WAR  265 

between  the  States  and  occupied  a  prominent  place  in  the 
Articles  of  Confederation  and  in  the  Constitution.  Congress 
had  more  than  once  enacted  legislation  at  the  request  of  the 
South  which  was  believed  at  the  time  to  be  sufficiently  strin 
gent.  After  1840,  however,  it  became  more  and  more  difficult 
to  apprehend  fugitives  and  it  was  well  known  that  an  * '  under 
ground  railroad"  had  been  formed  by  the  Abolitionists  for 
passing  the  fugitive  secretly  from  house  to  house  to  the  Cana 
dian  frontier.  In  Ohio  and  Indiana,  where  slave  territory 
was  nearest  Canada,  the  work  was  best  organized  and  escapes 
most  numerous;  but  many  fugitives  were  passed  through 
Philadelphia  into  New  York  and  New  England  and  so  into 
Canada. 

To  stop  this  obvious  defiance  of  Federal  statutes  had  long 
been  the  object  of  the  South,  which  was  now  clamoring  for  a 
law  so  severe  as  to  stop  the  escape  of  slaves.  In  addition, 
some  regularization  or  recognition  was  demanded  of  the 
*  *  right ' '  of  masters  to  travel  through  free  territory  with  their 
slaves  or  even  to  remain  there  permanently  without  losing 
their  "property."  Slaves  were  thus  held  in  most  Northern 
States  before  the  ^War,  and  in  Indiana  and  Illinois  they  were 
even  numerous,  but  the  sentiment  was  growing  rapidly  in 
favor  of  the  English  view  that  a  slave  brought  into  free  terri 
tory  became  at  once  free.  To  raise  this  point,  the  Dred  Scott 
case  was  at  this  time  begun,  whose  decision  on  appeal  by  the 
Supreme  Court  was  so  very  momentous  an  incident  in  the 
development  of  the  crisis  which  led  finally  to  hostilities. 

But  to  many  members  of  Congress  no  issue  so  imperatively 
demanded  settlement  as  the  question  of  the  continuance  of 
the  slave-trade  in  the  District  of  Columbia.  Must  their  de 
bates  be  interrupted  by  the  cries  of  auctioneers  and  of  bidders 
and  the  clanking  of  chains  at  the  slave  auction  just  behind  the 
Federal  capitol  ?  In  the  District  of  Columbia,  the  slave-trade 
had  no  reason  to  exist  because  there  was  no  active  use  of 
slaves  for  agriculture  there;  the  powers  to  prohibit  the  prac 
tice  seemed  to  be  vested  in  Congress,  for  the  District  could 
plausibly  be  argued  to  be  of  different  status  from  the  rest  of 


266  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

the  national  domain.  Its  slave-trade  was,  said  the  more  radi 
cal,  a  standing  and  unnecessary  insult  to  the  North,  kept  in 
existence  by  the  South  purely  as  a  demonstration  of  her  dom 
ination  over  the  Federal  government. 

The  debates  for  the  settlement  of  all  these  issues  were  long 
and  eminently  able,  and  centered  round  the  Wilmot  Proviso 
which  proposed  to  exclude  slavery  from  the  Mexican  acces 
sions.  The  issue  was  boldly  and  plainly  stated  by  the  South 
erners:  the  adoption  of  the  Proviso  would  justify  secession 
by  the  Southern  States  from  the  Union.  The  legislature  of 
Virginia  voted  that  rather  than  accept  the  Proviso  the  people 
of  Virginia  would  make  '  *  determined  resistance  at  all  hazards 
and  to  the  last  extremity."  Public  meetings  and  conventions 
throughout  the  South  very  generally  expressed  similar  senti 
ment,  and  at  a  great  public  banquet  in  South  Carolina  the 
toast,  "A  Southern  Confederacy"  was  received  with  great 
enthusiasm.1  A  convention  of  the  Southern  States  at  Nash 
ville  resolved  in  favor  of  the  lawfulness  and  constitutionality 
of  secession  and  was  believed  by  many  in  the  North  to  have 
met  to  concert  measures  for  forming  a  new  confederacy  in 
case  the  North  should  not  yield.  It  seems  highly  probable 
that  Calhoun  counseled  war  in  1850  on  the  ground  that 
the  provocation  was  sufficient,  compromise  merely  a  post 
ponement  of  war,  and  the  South  more  likely  to  prevail  than 
she  would  be  later.  Indeed,  confirmation  of  this  belief  is  lent 
by  the  fact  that  even  after  the  North  yielded  in  1850,  the 
newspapers  in  South  Carolina  and  a  convention  assembled  to 
discuss  the  question  were  practically  unanimous  in  favor  of 
secession  with  or  without  the  cooperation  of  other  States ;  and 
that  in  Mississippi  the  State  campaign  of  1851  was  fought  on 
the  issue  of  secession  with  Jefferson  Davis  as  the  secessionist 
candidate  for  Governor  and  Foote  as  the  candidate  favoring 
an  acceptance  of  the  Compromise  of  1850.  There  can  be 
little  doubt  that  many  understood  the  alternative  to  be  com- 

i  New  York  Tribune,  April  25,  1849.  "We  firmly  believe  that  there 
are  sixty  members  of  Congress  who  this  day  desire  a  dissolution  of  the 
Union  and  are  plotting  to  effect  it."  Ibid.,  Feb.  23,  1850. 


TEXAS  AND  THE  MEXICAN  WAR  2C7 

promise  or  secession,  and  that  the  feeling  at  the  North  in 
favor  of  nationalism  and  union  was  stronger  than  the  dislike 
of  slavery  or  of  its  extension. 

The  Compromise  of  1850  was  proposed  by  Clay,  and,  as 
finally  adopted,  provided  that  California  should  become  a 
free  State ;  that  the  land  claimed  by  Texas  should  be  divided 
and  that  State  compensated  for  the  surrender  of  a  consider 
able  part  of  her  claims  by  the  assumption  by  the  United 
States  of  her  indebtedness  incurred  while  independent;  but 
that  the  rest  of  the  land  acquired  from  Mexico  should  be  or 
ganized  into  Territories  without  stipulation  concerning  slav 
ery.  Slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia  was  abolished  in 
exchange  for  a  drastic  fugitive-slave  law.  This  provided 
for  a  summary  trial  without  jury  (on  the  ground  that  every 
Northern  jury  invariably  freed  the  negro),  threw  the  burden 
of  proof  on  the  negro,  and,  where  the  owner  had  been  com 
pelled  to  prove  the  man  his  escaped  slave,  forced  the  accused 
to  prove  himself  a  free  man.  Above  all,  the  testimony  of 
slaves  was  excluded.  It  was  "a  law,"  said  Emerson,  " which 
no  man  can  obey  or  abet  the  obeying  without  loss  of  self-re 
spect  and  forfeiture  of  the  name  of  a  gentleman."  2 

The  Compromise  was  carried  by  Clay  and  Webster,  who 
pleaded  for  union  and  peace,  against  Calhoun,  Seward,  and 
Chase,  who  predicted  war  and  secession.  As  Webster  showed, 
California  was  determined  to  be  free  and  was  too  far  away 
to  permit  effective  coercion;  the  South  might  well  yield  that. 
The  rest  of  the  territory  obtained  from  Mexico  was  prevented 
by  the  laws  of  nature  from  becoming  slave  territory;  it  was 
simply  a  gratuitous  insult  to  the  South  for  the  North  to  in 
sist  upon  excluding  slavery  from  it  by  law.  The  North  might 
easily  yield  that.  The  Compromise  of  1850  was  an  under 
standing,  an  agreement,  and  never  possessed  nor  was  meant 
to  possess  legal  status.  Specific  provisions  for  the  execution 
of  the  agreement  were  passed  in  the  form  of  six  separate  bills 
during  August  and  September,  1850.  There  was  much  ex 
ultation  throughout  the  country,  and  it  was  openly  claimed 

2  Cabot's  Emerson,  578. 


268  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

that  the  issues  had  been  settled  for  good  and  all: — the  South 
was  satisfied;  the  North  was  content.  Indeed,  during  the 
campaign  of  1852,  the  perpetual  observance  of  the  existing 
agreement  was  constantly  promised  and  campaign  orators 
desecrated  the  name  of  the  man  who  should  again  open  the 
issue  of  slavery. 

But  the  handwriting  was  already  on  the  wall,  and  there 
were  some  who  saw  it.  Surely,  the  States'  rights  conven 
tions,  the  approval  of  the  right  of  secession,  the  Southern 
elections  hotly  contested  and  carried  by  narrow  margins  in 
favor  of  the  Compromise,  were  sinister  omens  and  boded  ill  for 
its  perpetuity.  At  the  same  time,  none  of  these  incidents 
were  invested  by  contemporaries  with  a  tithe  of  the  signifi 
cance  we  now  attach  to  them  because  talk  of  secession,  nulli 
fication,  and  actual  dissolution  of  the  union  had  been  loud  at 
every  crisis  in  our  history,  and  men  had  become  accustomed 
to  hearing  every  difficulty  between  the  sections  alleged  as  ade 
quate  cause  for  disunion.  It  was  a  truly  ill  omen  that  the 
men  who  had  made  the  Compromise,  who  had  for  nearly 
forty  years  controlled  the  destinies  of  the  country,  had  all 
passed  away  before  the  settlement  was  two  years  old.  John 
Quincy  Adams  had  died  in  1848,  and  Calhoun  had  followed 
him  in  1850,  murmuring  '  *  The  South !  the  poor  South !  God 
knows  what  will  become  of  her!"  Ben  ton  was  defeated  for 
reelection  in  that  same  year  and  retired  to  private  life ;  Clay 
and  Webster  both  died  in  1852  and  it  was  universally  felt 
that  the  pillars  of  the  State  had  fallen.  The  control  passed 
into  the  hands  of  younger  men, — Seward,  Chase,  Davis, 
Douglas, — on  the  whole,  into  the  hands  of  the  enemies  rather 
than  the  friends  of  the  Compromise.  It  is  one  of  the  enigmas 
of  history  that  men  should  delude  themselves  into  the  belief 
that  the  waters  have  been  swept  back  with  the  broom  of  argu 
ment  at  just  the  moment  when  the  tidal  wave,  as  yet  a  tiny 
crest  of  white  along  the  distant  horizon,  is  rushing  towards 
them  with  the  speed  of  a  race-horse. 


XX 

THE  IRREPRESSIBLE  CONFLICT 

ONE  of  the  most  significant  facts  in  the  history  of  the  United 
States  is  the  growth  in  the  North  of  the  moral  conviction  that 
slavery  was  wrong.  The  North  had  become  pretty  thor 
oughly  convinced  by  1850  that  the  South  meant  to  extend 
slavery,  but,  until  a  clear  majority  of  the  people  were  agreed 
that  slavery  was  morally  wrong,  the  decision  of  the  South  to 
extend  it  still  permitted  discussion  and  made  compromise 
possible.  Until  it  became  clear  to  both  sides  that  compromise 
was  impossible,  a  war  could  not  result,  and,  for  the  historian 
of  the  United  States  the  all  important  fact  to  make  clear  is 
the  reason  why  two  sections  of  the  country  fought  each  other 
for  four  years.  A  disagreement,  a  fundamental  cleavage  in 
the  country,  was  clear  in  1850 ;  but  disagreements,  threats,  sec 
tional  interests,  a  belief  in  the  legality  and  possibility  of 
secession  were  as  old  as  the  country  itself.  No  one  consid 
ered  them  in  themselves  dangerous,  and  the  union  had  been 
so  many  times  on  the  brink  of  dissolution  that  men  had  almost 
begun  to  believe  it  capable  of  withstanding  all  shocks  and  at 
tacks.  A  change  took  place  after  1850  in  the  attitude  of  the 
North  which  treated  the  extension  of  slavery  as  a  wrong,  and 
which  led  the  North  to  demand  from  the  South  'a  definite 
statement  as  to  what  the  latter  proposed  to  do  about  the  ex 
tension  of  that  wrong. 

In  the  very  year  in  which  the  great  Compromise  was  passed, 
a  book  was  written  by  a  poor  woman  in  southern  Ohio  which 
became  the  most  mighty  ethical  influence  of  the  decade. 
Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  presented  slavery  to  the  North  in  a  con 
crete,  dramatic  story,  every  incident  of  which  was  intended  to 
convince  the  reader  that  slavery  was  wrong.  Whether  or  not 

269 


270  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

the  book  was  an  accurate  or  fair  picture  of  the  institution  is 
of  little  significance  compared  to  the  fact  that  within  a  few 
years  a  million  and  a  half  copies  were  sold  to  readers,  an 
overwhelming  majority  of  whom  believed  the  story  true.  Not 
those  things  which  are  true,  but  those  things  which  honest 
and  sincere  men  and  women  believe  to  be  true,  are  the  bases  of 
motive  forces  in  history.  Still,  the  North  as  a  whole  looked 
and  saw  nothing ;  it  listened  and  read  but  was  not  convinced. 

Now  came  three  incidents  which  effectually  roused  the 
North  and  which  to  the  thinking  of  millions  confirmed  the 
facts  and  pointed  the  moral  lesson  of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin — 
Kansas-Nebraska,  the  Dred  Scott  Decision,  and  the  Lincoln- 
Douglas  debates.  Books  and  speeches  had  left  the  North  in 
different  and  apathetic  because  only  a  fraction  of  the  people 
had  been  reached.  The  "  Crime  of  Kansas"  was  writ  high 
upon  the  heavens  for  him  to  read  who  ran. 

The  vast  stretches  of  the  Louisiana  Purchase  to  the  west  of 
Missouri  and  of  the  territories  of  Iowa  and  Minnesota  had 
not  yet  been  organized  at  all,  and  the  stream  of  people  surg 
ing  across  the  plains  to  California  and  Oregon  now  made 
necessary  some  sort  of  territorial  government,  if  only  to  pre 
serve  the  peace.  There  was  in  this  nothing  disputable,  but 
the  organization  of  the  district  instantly  raised  the  question 
of  the  status  of  slavery  and  evoked  from  the  North  the  state 
ment  that  the  Missouri  Compromise  had  consecrated  that  land 
to  freedom.  It  was  evident  to  the  South  that,  if  this  was 
true,  slavery  was  already  circumscribed,  and  that  the  end  of 
its  westward  march  and  of  its  further  development  was  al 
ready  in  sight,  for,  with  California  free,  Arkansas  and  Texas 
already  settled,  and  the  Indians  in  possession  of  the  only  other 
land  south  of  36°  30'  at  all  suitable  for  cotton,  there  was  no 
more  new  land  for  slave  States  and,  short  of  the  conquest  of 
Mexico,  there  never  would  be  any.  The  danger  so  long 
warded  off  was  already  upon  them.  The  Missouri  Compro 
mise,  the  Southerners  therefore  argued,  had  been  made  when 
circumstances  were  entirely  different  and  would  now  have  an 
effect  never  intended  by  its  framers.  Headed  by  Douglas, 


THE  IRREPRESSIBLE  CONFLICT  271 

they  demanded  the  opening  of  the  unorganized  territory  to 
slavery  and  alleged  that  the  Compromise  of  1850  abrogated 
the  Missouri  Compromise,  and  that  the  latter  had  been  never 
valid  at  all,  but  had  been  void  from  the  first  because  Congress 
had  no  power  to  prohibit  slavery  in  the  Territories. 

Here  was  an  issue  concerned  with  great  men,  with  great 
events ;  with  queries  not  merely  political,  moral,  and  religious, 
to  be  decided  by  general  principles,  and  an  appeal  to  logic 
and  reason ;  but  with  questions  of  fact  upon  which  a  definitive 
understanding  had  existed  among  statesmen  of  all  parties  for 
more  than  thirty  years.  The  Northern  men  brushed  aside 
the  constitutional  subtleties  regarding  the  invalidity  of  the 
Missouri  Compromise  and  declared  the  new  bill  the  breach  of 
a  compact  considered  sacred  by  a  generation  of  statesmen.1 
Despite  a  storm  of  protest  and  argument,  the  Kansas-Ne 
braska  Bill  passed,  dividing  the  great  area  into  two  parts, 
leaving  the  decision  in  regard  to  slavery  to  the  vote  of  the  in 
habitants  (''squatter  sovereignty")  and  declaring  the  Mis 
souri  Compromise  null  and  void.  "It  annuls  all  past  com 
promises  with  slavery/'  insisted  Sumner  of  Massachusetts, 
"and  makes  all  future  compromises  impossible.  Thus  it 
puts  freedom  and  slavery  face  to  face  and  bids  them  grapple." 
Chase  of  Ohio  even  more  nearly  touched  the  keynote  of  North 
ern  feeling.  "You  may  pass  it  here/'  he  told  the  senators, 
"it  may  become  law.  But  its  effect  will  be  to  satisfy  all  think 
ing  men  that  no  compromises  with  slavery  will  endure,  except 

i  It  was  not  noted  at  the  time  and  seems  to  have  been  hardly  realized 
since  that  the  Compromise  of  1820  had  already  been  broken.  The 
western  boundary  of  Missouri  had  originally  been  drawn  straight 
north  in  continuation  of  the  meridian  of  the  point  at  the  end  of  the 
southern  line.  This  line  crossed  the  Missouri  River  and  left  a  tri 
angular  delta  between  it  and  the  river,  which  of  course  did  not  form 
at  that  time  any  part  of  the  western  boundary  of  the  State,  a  large 
and  rich  district  coveted  by  the  Missourians.  According  to  the  terms 
of  the  Compromise,  this  was  free  territory,  but  in  1833  the  Federal 
government  made  a  treaty  with  the  Indians  for  the  cession  of  that 
district  and  by  act  of  Congress  made  it  part  of  Missouri.  If  this  act 
was  or  is  legal,  the  Compromise  of  1820  never  had  any  legal  status 
beyond  that  accorded  by  men  to  any  "gentlemen's  agreement."  Shep- 
ard,  Early  History  of  Missouri,  111. 


272  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

so  long  a.s  they  serve  the  interests  of  slavery."  The  Bill 
passed  just  before  dawn,  and,  as  the  senators  came  down  the 
steps  at  the  Capitol,  the  morning  guns  at  the  Navy  Yard  were 
sounding  the  usual  sunrise  salute.  The  Democrats  at  once  ex 
claimed  that  they  celebrated  the  victory  just  won.  Chase 
turned  to  Sumner  and  said  solemnly :  ' '  They  celebrate  a  pres 
ent  victory,  but  the  echoes  they  awake  will  never  rest  till 
slavery  itself  shall  die." 

The  excitement  in  the  North  was  prodigious  and  the  una 
nimity  of  condemnation  revealed  a  degree  of  agreement  un 
suspected.  Douglas  declared  that  he  could  have  traveled 
from  Chicago  to  Boston  by  the  light  of  his  own  burning  ef 
figies;  one  hundred  and  three  ladies  in  an  Ohio  village  de 
nounced  him  as  a  second  Judas  Iscariot  and  sent  him  the 
thirty  pieces  of  silver  for  which  they  declared  he  had  sold  his 
Lord. 

Kansas  had  been  opened  to  slavery ;  the  decision  of  the  new 
settlers  who  voted  at  the  first  territorial  election  would  de 
cide  its  status  so  far  as  slavery  was  concerned.  Men  from  all 
parts  of  the  country  joined  in  the  rush  to  Kansas  with  the 
avowed  intention  of  voting  on  one  side  or  the  other.  The 
New  England  Emigrant  Aid  Society  was  formed  to  encour 
age  the  resort  of  men  opposed  to  slavery  and  an  able  man  was 
sent  to  Kansas  to  direct  the  cause  of  the  Free-State  men,  as 
they  were  soon  called.  From  "Washington  came  a  Pro-Slavery 
man  as  governor,  sent  by  the  President  of  the  United 
States  with  definite  orders  to  make  Kansas  slave  territory. 
When  the  time  approached  for  the  territorial  election,  at 
which  the  question  of  the  status  of  Kansas  while  a  Territory 
was  to  be  decided,  a  rough,  boisterous,  unkempt  mob  of  border 
ruffians  came  over  from  Missouri,  voted  at  the  election,  and 
carried  Kansas  for  slavery.  There  were  about  2900  legal 
voters  in  the  territory;  5427  votes  were  cast  for  slavery,  prov 
ing  to  many  Eastern  men  that  slavery  advocates  intended 
to  make  Kansas  " slave"  even  if  it  were  necessary  to  resort 
to  foul  means  to  do  it. 

The  Governor  accepted  the  fraudulent  votes  as  valid  and 


THE  IRREPRESSIBLE  CONFLICT  273 

organized  a  Pro-Slavery  legislature.  The  Free-State  men  pre 
pared  a  constitution,  elected  a  delegate  to  Congress  by  about 
a  hundred  more  votes  than  had  been  cast  for  the  Pro-Slavery 
delegate,  and  asked  recognition  from  Congress  as  the  true 
majority  in  Kansas,  entitled  to  govern  the  territory  by  any 
proper  interpretation  of  the  recent  act.  Congress  declined 
to  accept  their  claim  and  for  a  while  considered  requesting  the 
President  to  suppress  them.  Meanwhile,  the  Pro-Slavery  men, 
aided  by  a  large  mob  from  Missouri,  advanced  upon  the 
Free-State  town  of  Lawrence,  intending  to  sack  it,  but  the 
Free-State  men  were  well  armed  and  a  truce  was  agreed  to 
by  the  leaders,  cold  weather  arrived,  and  the  "army"  with 
drew,  carrying  three  dead  bodies, — one  man  killed  by  the 
falling  of  a  tree,  one  shot  by  his  own  guard,  and  a  third 
killed  in  a  brawl.  In  Lawrence,  one  man  alone  protested 
against  the  agreement  not  to  fight, — a  tall,  slender  man  with 
a  somber  face,  fired  with  intense  earnestness,  John  Brown. 

The  Pro-Slavery  men  retired,  avowedly  but  to  await  a  better 
opportunity.  The  sheriff  a  little  afterward  was  in  Lawrence, 
and,  a  shot  intended  for  some  one  else  coming  in  his  direc 
tion  by  accident,  he  declared  that  the  Free-State  men  had 
attempted  to  murder  him.  He  impaneled  a  grand  jury  which 
indicted  them  all  for  murder,  and  the  marshal  gathered  a 
posse  of  some  scores  of  men  from  Kansas  and  a  thousand 
or  more  ruffians,  who  came  over  the  river  from  Missouri, 
armed  to  the  teeth  and  well  provided  with  whisky.  At 
Lawrence  no  resistance  was  offered ;  some  arrests  were  quietly 
made ;  but  the  Missourians  were  not  to  be  balked  twice.  The 
town  was  thoroughly  sacked  on  May  20,  1856. 

Two  days  later,  in  the  United  States  Senate,  Charles  Sum- 
ner  of  Massachusetts  delivered  an  eloquent  and  bitter  ar 
raignment  of  the  Pro-Slavery  attitude  towards  Kansas.  To 
wipe  out  the  insult  to  the  South,  as  he  deemed  it  to  be,  Brooks 
of  South  Carolina  approached  Sumner,  writing  at  his  desk  in 
the  almost  empty  Senate  Chamber,  and  struck  him  repeatedly 
on  the  head  from  behind  with  a  heavy  cane  till  he  fell  from 
his  chair  unconscious.  The  news  of  the  sack  of  Lawrence 


274  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

and  of  the  assault  on  Sumner  reached  the  country  almost 
simultaneously  and  caused  an  outburst  of  indignation  and 
anger  at  the  North  such  as  had  never  been  known  before. 
The  newspapers  came  out  with  great  black  headlines,  "The 
Crime  against  Kansas/'  "Bleeding  Kansas,"  "Shrieks  from 
Kansas. ' '  The  effect  would  have  been  immeasurably  less  pro 
found  had  not  the  South  openly  declared  the  cause  of  the 
Pro-Slavery  men  in  Kansas  that  of  the  South  itself,  and  if 
it  had  not  rejoiced  at  the  assault  upon  Sumner,  tendering 
banquets  to  his  assailant  at  which  gold  canes  were  presented 
to  him  and  his  health  toasted. 

Whatever  actually  happened  in  Kansas,  the  North  believed 
that  a  premeditated  design  was  being  executed  by  fraud  and 
force  to  make  Kansas  slave.  To  secure  the  opportunity  the 
South  had  broken  so  sacred  a  compact  as  the  Missouri  Com 
promise  and  had  provided  that  the  people  who  went  to  Kansas 
should  decide  for  or  against  slavery.  But  finding  the  majority 
were  Free-State  men,  ballot  boxes  had  been  stuffed,  innocent 
men  slain,  an  unresisting  town  sacked  by  a  drunken  crew  of 
ruffians  imported  for  the  purpose.  And  such  actions  the 
President  and  Congress  of  the  United  States  had  approved 
by  the  high  authority  vested  in  them  and  behind  these  ruffians 
had  placed  the  sanction  of  Federal  authority !  The  President 
had  removed  seriatim  the  Governors  who  declined  to  obey 
his  partisan  orders  to  support  the  Pro-Slavery  party  with 
Federal  troops ;  the  Houses  of  Congress  had  declined  to  accept 
the  government  formed  by  the  numerical  majority  in  Kansas. 
To  pass  the  enabling  act  they  had  been  forced  to  descend  to 
perjury  and  fraud;  to  prevent  the  honest  execution  of  their 
own  measure,  they  had  been  driven  to  deceit,  arson,  and 
murder.  They  had  been  willing  to  allow  the  inhabitants  of 
Kansas  to  vote  in  favor  of  slavery;  they  had  no  intention 
at  all  of  recognizing  as  valid  the  vote  against  it.2 

2  "While  the  Nebraska  Bill  was  pending,  Judge  Douglas  helped  to 
vote  down  a  clause  giving  the  people  of  the  Territories  the  right 
to  exclude  slavery  if  they  chose."  Lincoln,  speech  at  Beardstown,  1858. 
Herndon,  Life  of  Lincoln,  II,  99-100. 


THE  IRREPRESSIBLE  CONFLICT  275 

The  following  month  of  June,  1856,  saw  the  first  national 
convention  of  a  new  political  party,  the  Republican  party, 
composed  of  men  opposed  to  the  extension  of  slavery.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  its  strength  and  unity  were  largely  due 
to  the  events  in  Kansas.  Throughout  the  North  had  sprung 
up  during  the  preceding  fifteen  years  groups  of  men,  for  the 
most  part  fragments  of  the  old  Whig  party,  who  were  try 
ing  to  organize  an  opposition  to  the  ruling  party,  and  most 
of  whom  had  made  prominent  in  their  platform  a  plank  either 
connected  with  liberty  or  with  some  form  of  opposition  to 
slavery.  The  movement  to  fuse  them  into  one  party  had 
begun  in  the  Northwest  and  had  been  on  the  whole  successful, 
but  was  made  positive  and  permanent  by  the  spectacle  of 
"bleeding  Kansas."  In  a  great  speech  at  Rochester,  N.  Y., 
Seward  struck  the  keynote  of  the  campaign:  "It  is  an  ir 
repressible  conflict  between  opposing  and  enduring  forces  and 
it  means  that  the  United  States  must  and  will,  sooner  or  later, 
become  either  entirely  a  slaveholding  nation  or  entirely  a 
free  labor  nation.  ...  I  know  and  you  know  that  a  revolution 
has  begun.  I  know  and  all  the  world  knows  that  revolutions 
never  go  backwards."  Fremont  was  nominated  by  the  Re 
publicans  and  ran  on  a  platform  which  opposed  the  further 
extension  of  slavery.  Apprehension  at  the  South  was  keen, 
and  preparations  for  secession,  should  he  be  elected,  were 
said  to  have  been  made.  The  Democrats  elected  Buchanan 
President,  but  they  carried  only  four  Northern  States  and  the 
popular  vote  gave  them  only  half  a  million  votes  more  than 
the  Republicans.  The  moral  feeling  of  the  North  that  slavery 
was  wrong  had  attained  effective  political  expression  in  a 
strong  new  party  pledged  to  prevent  its  extension. 

Now  came  the  pronouncement  in  1857  of  the  decision  of  the 
Supreme  Court  in  the  famous  Dred  Scott  case.  The  issue 
was  essentially  simple:  Scott,  a  slave,  had  been  carried  by 
his  master  into  free  territory,  where  he  had  long  resided,  and 
whence  he  had  then  willingly  accompanied  his  master  back 
into  slave  territory.  The  claim  was  that  his  residence  in  free 
territory  had  made  him  free;  but  the  case  took  such  a  form 


276  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

that  the  only  issue  for  the  court  to  decide  was  his  status 
at  the  time  of  the  suit's  institution.  A  majority  of  the  judges 
agreed  that  he  was  then  a  slave  and  hence  unable  to  sue 
in  the  courts,  but  disagreed  entirely  upon  the  reasoning  by 
which  they  reached  that  conclusion.  The  political  signifi 
cance  of  the  case  arose  from  the  fact  that  some  of  the  judges, 
notably  the  Chief  Justice,  a  Southerner,  considered  in  his 
opinion  and  pronounced  in  favor  of  the  South  upon  the 
multitudinous  constitutional  controversies  regarding  slavery. 
That  Taney  acted  with  high-minded  purpose  in  an  attempt 
to  fend  off  possible  war,  is  clear;  that  the  South  proclaimed 
from  the  house-tops  that  the  Supreme  Court  had  decided  for 
all  time  in  favor  of  slavery  upon  the  legal  issues,  is  also 
clear;  that  the  North  utterly  declined  to  accept  the  new 
decision  as  of  any  validity,  is  beyond  doubt  at  all.  The 
arguments  of  the  judges  roused  the  North  far  less  than  the 
conclusions  which  the  South  drew  from  them  and  the  signifi 
cance  the  South  was  determined  to  give  them.  If  Congress 
had  no  power  over  slavery  in  the  States,  and  if  the  decision 
meant  that  it  could  not  prohibit  slavery  in  the  Territories, 
it  had  then  no  discretion  at  all ;  it  could  act  only  to  preserve, 
extend,  and  protect  slavery.  Taney 's  opinion  was  soon  con 
densed  into  an  aphorism  which  obtained  great  currency  at 
the  North, — 'that  negroes  had  no  rights  which  the  white  man 
was  bound  to  respect.' 

The  Northern  lawyers  instantly  pointed  out  that  the  de 
cision  of  the  court,  which  alone  was  of  legal  obligation, 
concerned  Dred  Scott,  and  that  the  long  arguments  concern 
ing  the  status  of  slavery  were  merely  obiter  dicta,  which  the 
practice  of  centuries  held  to  be  of  no  legal  obligation  what 
ever.  But,  even  if  these  statements  upon  the  general  con 
troversy  were  valid,  there  was  no  agreement  among  the  judges 
upon  these  points,  and  to  declare  the  individual  opinion  of 
the  Chief  Justice  the  decision  of  the  court  was  a  flat  contra 
diction  of  obvious  facts.  As  if  to  give  point  to  the  argu 
ments  of  the  angry  Northern  lawyers,  the  Southern  Demo 
crats  printed  thousands  of  copies  of  Taney 's  opinion,  dis- 


THE  IRREPRESSIBLE  CONFLICT  277 

tributed  them  as  campaign  documents,  and  openly  taunted  the 
Kepublicans,  demanding  "Well,  what  are  you  going  to  do 
about  it?"  Was  it  true,  the  Northern  leaders  asked  each 
other,  that  slavery  could  not  be  constitutionally  restricted, 
that  this  wrong  was  to  be  perpetuated  despite  them,  was 
protected  by  the  Constitution  itself  and  defended  by  Presi 
dent,  Congress,  and  Supreme  Court?  "Alas,"  lamented  the 
New  York  Tribune,  "the  character  of  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States  as  an  impartial  judicial  body  has  gone ! 
It  has  abdicated  its  just  functions  and  descended  into  the 
political  mire.  ...  It  has  draggled  and  polluted  the  ermine 
in  the  filth  of  pro-slavery  politics." 

Now  came  news  in  the  fall  of  1858  that  out  in  the  West, 
the  "little  Giant,"  the  great  Douglas  himself,  had  been  bested 
in  a  series  of  debates  by  a  lanky,  raw-boned  Illinois  country 
lawyer,  a  mighty  plain-spoken  man,  affectionately  alluded  to 
by  his  admirers,  as  the  "Tall  Sucker," — Abraham  Lincoln. 
What  he  said  was  startlingly  clear  and  expressed  what  many 
in  the  country  had  long  been  trying  to  say  for  themselves. 
He  was  able  to  grasp  both  sides  of  the  issue;  to  make  every 
allowance  a  fair-minded  man  could  ask,  but  his  statement 
of  the  crux  of  the  difficulty  was  illuminating  and  satisfying. 

"I  think  I  have  no  prejudice  against  the  Southern  people," 
he  told  his  audience  at  Galesburg.  "They  are  just  what  we 
would  be  in  their  situation.  If  slavery  did  not  now  exist 
amongst  them  they  would  not  introduce  it.  If  it  did  now 
j  exist  amongst  us,  we  should  not  instantly  give  it  up.  This 
I  believe  of  the  masses  of  the  North  and  South.  .  .  .  When 
Southern  people  tell  us  that  they  are  no  more  responsible  for 
the  origin  of  slavery  than  we,  I  acknowledge  the  fact.  When 
it  is  said  that  the  institution  exists,  and  that  it  is  very  difficult 
to  get  rid  of  it,  in  any  satisfactory  way,  I  can  understand  and 
appreciate  the  saying.  I  surely  will  not  blame  them  for 
not  doing  what  I  should  not  know  how  to  do  myself.  If  all 
earthly  power  were  given  me,  I  should  not  know  what  to  do 
as  to  the  existing  institution.  ...  I  have  no  purpose,  di 
rectly  or  indirectly,  to  interfere  with  the  institution  of  slavery 


278  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

in  the  states  where  it  exists.  I  believe  I  have  no  lawful  right 
to  do  so,  and  I  have  no  inclination  to  do  so.  I  have  no 
purpose  to  introduce  political  and  social  equality  between 
the  white  and  black  races.  .  .  .  But  I  hold  that,  not 
withstanding  all  this,  there  is  no  reason  in  the  world  why 
the  negro  is  not  entitled  to  all  the  natural  rights  enumerated 
in  the  Declaration  of  Independence — the  right  to  life,  liberty, 
and  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  ...  In  the  right  to  eat  the 
bread  without  the  leave  of  anybody  else,  which  his  own  hand 
earns,  he  is  my  equal  and  the  equal  of  Judge  Douglas,  and 
the  equal  of  every  living  man."  "To  satisfy  the  Southern 
ers,"  he  said  to  a  New  York  audience  in  1859,  "we  must 
cease  to  call  slavery  wrong,  and  join  them  in  calling  it  right. 
And  this  must  be  done  thoroughly,  done  in  acts  as  well  as 
words.  ...  If  it  is  right,  we  cannot  object  to  its  nationality, 
its  universality;  if  it  is  wrong,  they  cannot  justly  insist 
upon  its  extension,  its  enlargement.  All  they  ask  we  could 
readily  grant,  if  we  thought  slavery  right;  all  we  ask  they 
could  as  readily  grant,  if  they  thought  it  wrong.  Their 
thinking  it  right  and  our  thinking  it  wrong  is  the  precise 
fact  upon  which  depends  the  whole  controversy.  Thinking  it 
right,  as  they  do,  they  are  not  to  blame  for  desiring  its  full 
recognition,  as  being  right;  but  thinking  it  wrong,  as  we  do, 
can  we  yield  to  them?  ...  If  our  sense  of  duty  forbids 
this,  ...  let  us  be  diverted  by  no  sophistical  consequences — 
such  as  groping  for  some  middle  ground  between  the  right 
and  the  wrong,  vain  as  the  search  for  a  man  who  should  be 
neither  a  living  man  nor  a  dead  man;  such  as  a  policy  of 
' don't  care'  on  a  question  about  which  all  true  men  do 
care." 

Lincoln's  reputation  spread;  the  East  wished  to  hear  him 
and  he  spoke  in  many  parts  of  the  country,  always  to  the 
same  purpose,  always  leaving  behind  him  a  deep  impression 
of  his  fairness,  honesty,  and  sincerity.  Above  all,  he  was 
a  "plain  man,"  who  used  plain  language.  If  slavery  was 
right,  why  not  extend  it  ?  If  slavery  was  wrong,  why  consider 
its  extension  at  all?  How  could  one  coolly  propose  to  per- 


THE  IRREPRESSIBLE  CONFLICT  279 

petuate  a  wrong?  Should  the  South  be  allowed  to  destroy 
the  Missouri  Compromise,  commit  arson  and  murder  in  Kansas, 
drag  the  judicial  ermine  in  the  mire,  to  extend  and  per 
petuate  a  wrong?  He  gave  the  Northern  people  an  ethical 
test  to  apply  to  the  situation  which  at  last  enabled  them  to 
make  up  their  minds. 

At  this  juncture,  a  book  written  by  a  "poor  white "  in 
North  Carolina,  The  Impending  Crisis  of  the  South,  raised 
squarely  the  most  significant  issue  of  all,  as  was  promptly 
recognized  both  North  and  South.  If  slavery  was  so  good 
a  thing,  for  u'hose  good  was  it?  Helper  emphasized  with 
relentless  force  the  facts  in  the  United  States  census,  that  the 
direct  benefits  of  slavery  accrued  to  only  a  part  of  the  whites 
at  the  South;  that  the  splendor,  luxury,  and  culture  of  the 
South,  which  had  been  so  praised,  were  the  possession  of 
a  small  minority  of  the  whites,  who  ruled  for  their  own 
particular  benefit  six  million  whites  and  nearly  four  million 
blacks.  The  problem,  he  showed,  was  not  one  of  two  di 
mensions,  concerned  only  with  the  master  and  his  slave,  but 
one  of  the  three  dimensions,  concerned  with  master,  slave,  and 
the  poor  whites,  the  overwhelming  majority  of  the  white 
people  at  the  South,  who  had  no  vital  interest  in  slavery 
and  no  hopes  of  possessing  any.  Pitilessly  he  exposed  their 
poverty,  their  lack  of  economic,  social,  and  political  rights, 
and  demanded  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  name  of  the  ma 
jority  of  the  whites  in  the  South,  as  the  only  means  of  restoring 
to  them  their  true  freedom  and  privileges,  as  the  only  means  of 
providing  a  market  for  their  labor  and  their  produce.  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin  had  told  of  the  wrongs  done  to  the  slave ;  Helper 
dwelt  upon  the  wrongs  done  to  the  white  man.  Great  piles 
of  the  book  became  a  familiar  sight  in  Northern  book  stores; 
the  Kepublicans  circulated  it  as  a  campaign  document;  the 
Southerners  further  advertised  it  by  their  efforts  to  secure 
its  suppression.  The  query  began  to  form  in  Northern  minds : 
is  not  this  fear  of  discussion,  this  desire  to  prevent  investi 
gation  and  comment  fathered  by  the  knowledge  that  the 
facts  are  not  as  favorable  to  slavery  as  they  allege  them  to 


280  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

be?  Had  the  poor  whites  in  the  South  been  able  to  read 
and  understand  the  book,  it  would  have  spelled  the  fall  of 
the  slave-power. 

Nor  did  the  clamor  at  the  South  for  the  reopening  of  the 
slave-trade  fail  to  furnish  Northern  minds  with  corroboration 
of  the  arguments  of  Lincoln  and  Helper.  In  1858,  a  con 
vention  in  Alabama  gave  its  entire  attention  to  the  subject; 
a  general  convention  at  Vicksburg  in  1859  voted  two  to  one  in 
favor  of  reopening  the  slave-trade,  while  in  the  legislature  of 
Louisiana  bills  were  under  consideration  for  the  importation 
of  " black  apprentices,'7  and  some  thousands  of  negroes  were 
actually  smuggled  into  the  country  from  Africa.  The  Charles 
ton  Mercury,  one  of  the  most  influential  papers  in  the  South, 
championed  the  cause  ardently  and  declared  that  the  decay 
of  cotton-culture  in  South  Carolina  was  wholly  due  to  the 
prohibition  upon  the  importation  of  slaves. 

And  now  sounded  through  the  land  what  many  felt  was 
the  voice  crying  in  the  wilderness,  shouting  the  battle-cry 
of  freedom.  A  man  came  forward  calling  for  action: 
" These  men  are  all  talk — what  we  want  is  action — action!" 
Men  were  needed,  he  said,  who  would  "  break  the  jaws  of 
the  wicked  and  pluck  the  spoil  out  of  his  teeth."  John 
Brown  nourished  himself  upon  the  avenging  clauses  of  the 
Old  Testament  and  believed  himself  called  to  be  the  soldier 
of  the  Lord,  called  to  wreak  God's  vengeance  upon  the  Pro- 
Slavery  men.  He  had  been  in  Kansas  and  had  murdered 
men  in  cold  blood  in  the  name  of  Truth  and  Justice.  Now 
he  believed  that  the  knowledge  among  the  slaves  that  a 
haven  of  refuge  existed  in  the  mountains  of  Virginia,  where 
they  would  be  protected  by  force  from  capture,  would  lead 
to  a  general  attempt  to  escape  and  perhaps  to  a  slave  insur 
rection.  The  remarkable  thing  about  Brown's  raid  is  the 
philanthropists  of  national  repute  whose  support  he  secured, 
and  who  provided  him  with  money  and  arms.  After  all 
has  been  said,  there  must  have  been  something  remarkable 
about  the  man.  The  raid  failed;  he  held  the  arsenal  at 


THE  IRREPRESSIBLE  CONFLICT  281 

Harper's  Ferry  for  a  few  hours,   and  then  was  captured 
by  Federal  troops. 

The  news  of  an  attempt  to  rouse  and  arm  the  slaves  caused 
in  the  South  a  paroxysm  of  terror  and  a  demand  for  justice 
on  the  perpetrator  and  protection  for  the  South  from  the 
Federal  government.  The  North  was  stirred  as  never  before 
by  the  sight  of  a  man  who  voluntarily,  cheerfully,  laid  down 
his  life  for  the  principle  that  slavery  was  wrong.  "The 
cry  of  the  oppressed,"  he  said  in  prison,  "is  my  reason  and 
the  only  thing  that  prompted  me  to  come  here/'  "I  feel 
just  as  content  to  die  for  God's  eternal  truth  on  the  scaffold 
as  in  any  other  way."  All  his  sins  were  forgotten  in  his 
atonement.  To  the  Northern  Abolitionists,  he  was  a  martyr. 
To  them,  the  moment  for  the  downfall  of  slavery  was  near, — 
a  man  had  died  for  the  cause!  "This  will  be  a  great  day 
in  our  history,"  wrote  the  poet  Longfellow  in  his  journal 
under  the  date  of  John  Brown 's  execution, ' '  the  date  of  a  new 
revolution  quite  as  much  needed  as  the  old  one. '  *  Four  years 
later,  when  on  the  battlefield  at  Gettysburg,  the  last  gallant 
charge  of  Pickett's  brigade  faltered,  broke,  and  fled,  the 
Union  soldiers  on  Round  Top  swung  their  caps  in  the  air 
and  chanted  in  mighty  chorus,  rolling  out  over  the  valley 
filled  with  the  flying  and  the  pursuers, 

"John  Brown's  body  lies  a-mouldering  in  the  grave, — 
His  soul  goes  marching  on." 


XXI 

THE  CAUSES  OF  SECESSION 

ON  a  very  momentous  day  in  the  annals  of  America  a  body 
of  representative  men  were  assembled  to  discuss  the  most 
vital  issue  of  the  time.  In  the  chair  was  a  man  long 
venerated  for  his  probity  and  wisdom.  The  crisis  in  the  dis 
cussion  of  the  critical  issue  had  been  reached;  different 
opinions  had  been  hotly  maintained  by  excited  disputants; 
and  the  matter  then  engrossing  the  minds  of  all  was  the  cause 
of  so  serious  a  disagreement.  The  speaker  addressing  the 
assembly  contended — to  use  the  words  of  the  record — ''that 
the  States  were  divided  into  different  interests,  not  by  their 
difference  of  size  but  by  other  circumstances,  the  most  material 
of  which  resulted  partly  from  climate,  but  principally  from 
the  effects  of  their  having  or  not  having  slaves.  These  two 
causes  concurred  in  forming  the  great  division  of  interests 
in  the  United  States.  It  did  not  lie  between  the  large  and 
small  States:  It  lay  between  the  Northern  and  the  South 
ern.' ?1  Those  words  were  spoken  by  James  Madison  in  the 
Convention  which  framed  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States.  The  vital  cleft  of  the  country  into  North  and  South 
is  older  than  the  Constitution,  older  than  States'  rights,  older 
than  the  cotton-culture,  older  than  the  anti-slavery  movement. 
Later  in  the  debate,  Gouverneur  Morris  declared  that  this 
distinction  between  the  Northern  and  Southern  States  "is 
either  fictitious  or  real ;  if  fictitious,  let  it  be  dismissed  and  let 
us  proceed  with  due  confidence.  If  it  be  real,  instead  of 
attempting  to  blend  incompatible  things,  let  us  at  once  take  a 
friendly  leave  of  each  other. ' ' 2  With  him  agreed  Luther 

1  Hunt's  Madison's  Notes,  I,  278. 

2  Hunt's   Madison's  Notes,   I,   351.     What   eventually   happened    was 

282 


THE  CAUSES  OF  SECESSION  283 

Martin  of  Maryland.  "He  was  for  letting  a  separation  take 
place  if  they  desired  it;  he  had  rather  there  should  be  two 
confederacies  than  one"  founded  on  such  principles  as  those 
proposed.3  James  Wilson  of  Pennsylvania  added  that  he 
knew  some  respectable,  earnest  men  who  preferred  three 
confederacies,  united  by  offensive  and  defensive  alliances.4 
Such  ideas,  however,  were  far  from  new  to  the  listeners. 
Half  the  earlier  schemes  for  central  government  had  pro 
vided  for  two,  three,  or  even  four  confederacies.  Nullifi 
cation  had  appeared  in  the  New  England  Confederacy  when 
Massachusetts  and  Plymouth  were  hardly  more  than  a  score 
of  years  old.  The  right  of  secession  had  been  openly  pro 
claimed  in  the  debates  upon  the  adoption  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence.5  The  infant  nation,  in  fact,  was  suckled  by 
secession  and  nourished  upon  States'  rights.  After  the  Con 
vention  had  finished  its  work  and  the  Constitution  was  before 
the  country  for  adoption,  Cyrus  Griffin  wrote  from  New  York : 
"We  are  told  that  Mr.  George  Mason  (of  Virginia)  has 
declared  himself  so  great  an  enemy  to  the  Constitution  that 
he  will  heartily  join  Mr.  Henry  and  others  in  promoting  a 
Southern  Confederacy."  6  Indeed  so  true  was  this  prediction, 
that  when  the  Virginia  Convention  had  adopted  the  Constitu 
tion,  Patrick  Henry  was  invited  by  the  minority  to  become 
President  of  a  body  to  formulate  plans  for  the  formation  of  an 
other  Confederacy.  Probably  nothing  but  his  refusal  to 
countenance  it  prevented  its  success.7 

foreseen.  King  said:  "If  they  [the  Southern  States]  threaten  to  sepa 
rate  now-  in  case  injury  shall  be  done  them,  will  their  threats  be  less 
urgent  or  effectual,  when  force  shall  back  their  demands?  Even  in  the 
intervening  period,  there  will  be  no  point  of  time  at  which  they  will 
not  be  able  to  say,  'Do  us  justice  or  we  will  separate.'  "  Ibid.,  345-6. 

s  Ibid.,  356;   253. 

*Ibid.,  363. 

5  It  was  said  that  the  delegates  of  such  States  as  did  not  agree  to 
independence  must  withdraw  from  Congress  "and  possibly  their  colo 
nies  might  secede  from  the  union."  Quoted  in  Hazelton,  Declaration 
of  Independence,  112. 

«  Bancroft's  History  of  the  Constitution,  II,  461. 

i  Rowland's  Life  of  Mason,  II,  274.  The  whole  incident  is  fully 
described. 


284  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Not  only  were  those  ideas  old  when  the  Constitution  was 
adopted,  when  slavery  was  believed  to  be  dying  a  natural 
death,  and  when  the  cotton-gin  had  not  yet  made  cotton- 
culture  profitable  in  America;  but  in  the  succeeding  gener 
ations  these  notions  were  held  by  Northern  and  Western 
States  as  well  as  by  Southern.  It  is  probably  no  exagger 
ation  to  say  that  when  the  great  debates  over  the  admis 
sion  of  Missouri  in  1819  made  clear  for  the  first  time  the 
depth  of  the  cleft  between  the  North  and  South,  every  State 
in  the  Union  had  at  some  time  within  the  preceding  half 
century  nullified  some  law  or  threatened  to  secede.  North, 
South,  West,  East,  had  all  planned  secession  before  1820, 
before  the  issues  and  factors  prominent  in  the  later  struggle 
had  unmistakably  appeared. 

In  fact,  the  fundamental  issues  of  the  Civil  War  were  old 
and  not  new.  They  were  fundamental  in  the  broadest  sense, 
far  transcending  the  influence  or  notions  of  any  man  or 
group  of  men,  or  indeed  of  any  single  generation.  They 
were  not  produced  by  Calhoun,  Davis,  or  Lincoln,  and  were 
of  a  nature  which,  in  fact,  forbade  their  conscious  creation 
at  all.  No  individual  or  body  of  individuals,  no  section  of 
the  country  was  in  this  sense  to  blame  for  the  Civil  War. 
It  was,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  result  of  climate  and  of 
geographical  conditions  as  old  as  the  Glacial  period,  which 
began  to  exert  their  influence  when  the  mammoth  flourished 
in  Kansas  and  when  the  cave  bear  still  suckled  her  young 
in  the  Virginia  mountains.  We  must  very  carefully  separate 
the  difficulty  which  created  the  possibility  of  a  disagreement 
between  two  sections  of  this  country  from  its  own  fundamental 
causes  and  also  from  those  particular  manifestations  of  it 
in  the  early  nineteenth  century  about  which  men  began  to 
argue.  We  have  even  then  only  approached  the  situation 
where  we  find  men  drifting  from  disagreement  into  threats 
and  from  threats  into  defiance,  and  we  must  still  make 
clear  the  specific  factors  and  events  which  created  two  radical 
parties  who  could  see  no  solution  except  in  war.  And  even 
when  we  have  found  the  cause  of  the  determination  to  fight 


THE  CAUSES  OF  SECESSION  285 

we  are  still  far  from  the  actual  casus  belli  over  which  the 
fighting  began.  The  technical  casus  belli,  the  firing  on  Sum- 
ter,  no  doubt  grew  out  of  a  disagreement  on  the  constitutional 
question  of  States'  rights;  and  the  student  will  on  this  ground 
agree  with  the  position  of  Davis  and  of  Stephens  after  the 
War  that  States'  rights  was  the  sole  and  only  cause  of  the 
War.  The  issue,  however,  which  brought  States'  rights  to 
the  fore  in  1860  was  unquestionably  slavery,  and  the  student 
can  on  this  basis  agree  with  Lincoln  and  many  historians 
that  a  difference  of  opinion  over  slavery  really  caused  the 
War.  But  if  the  student  seeks  the  reasons  why  both  slavery 
and  States'  rights  were  under  discussion  at  all,  he  will  see 
that  sectionalism,  the  existence  in  the  country  of  two  strata 
widely  differing  in  economic  and  institutional  life,  was  the 
real  difficulty,  and  he  will  find  its  existence  adequately  ex 
plained  by  the  geographical  and  geological  factors  operating 
in  America  for  uncounted  millions  of  years.  These  conditions 
were  found  by  the  first  settlers;  they  shaped  colonial  history 
when  the  white  slaves  in  the  South  outnumbered  the  black; 
moulded  the  Constitution;  produced  tobacco,  cotton,  slavery, 
and  the  War;  and  are  still  to-day  actively  fashioning  the 
issues  of  presidential  campaigns. 

The  great  events  of  American  history  have  been  attempts 
to  reconcile  the  outward  political  form  of  the  government 
with  great  existing  economic  and  social  facts.  In  1776,  the 
States  were  in  all  but  law  and  name  independent  of  England ; 
the  Revolution  merely  brought  the  political  situation  into 
conformity  with  the  actual  facts.  In  1789,  the  Constitution 
set  up  a  relationship  between  the  States  on  the  whole  in  con 
formity  with  their  actual  relations.  But  in  the  subsequent 
decades  were  developed  two  great  economic  forces  utterly 
changing  the  situation ;  and  men  began  to  argue  whether  the 
superior  economic  power  was  the  diversified  industry  of  the 
North  or  the  growth  of  cotton  by  slaves.  Slavery,  cotton, 
machinery,  railroads,  tariff,  new  territory,  had  been  either 
very  minor  factors  or  not  dreamed  of  when  the  Constitution 
was  framed.  Their  constitutionality  was  therefore  a  most 


286  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

legitimate  issue  for  debate,  and  the  task  of  the  Civil  War  was 
the  adjustment  of  the  legal  fabric  of  central  government  to 
the  obvious  economic  and  territorial  facts  in  existence. 

At  the  same  time  that  we  recognize  the  fundamental  char 
acter  of  the  cleft  between  the  sections  and  the  absolute  neces 
sity  of  some  sort  of  decision  upon  the  fundamental  constitu 
tional  relations  of  new  economic  forces  to  the  older  economic 
and  political  factors,  we  must  not  assume  that  their  settle 
ment  by  the  arbitrament  of  arms  was  inevitable.  Had  the 
country  developed  more  slowly  and  less,  as  it  were,  by  spas 
modic  spurts,  the  adjustment  of  forces  would  perhaps  have 
insensibly  taken  place  in  the  course  of  their  development.8 
The  immediate  cause  of  war  was  the  impossibility  of  settling 
the  issues  by  compromise  or  agreement.  For  fully  forty  years, 
the  statesmen  of  the  various  sections  successfully  made  com 
promise  after  compromise.  Indeed,  the  period  between  1820 
and  1860  ought  perhaps  to  be  studied  less  as  the  growth  of 
the  war-spirit  than  as  a  time  when  the  solitary  object  of  all 
parties  was  the  avoidance  of  hostilities.  But  this  prolonged 
attempt  to  settle  the  fundamental  relations  of  the  two  sections 
was  frustrated  by  the  very  rapidity  of  the  country's  growth. 
No  sooner  had  some  compromise  mutually  satisfactory  to  all 
been  made  with  much  rejoicing  than  the  whole  situation, 
which  it  was  intended  to  adjust,  was  entirely  changed  by  the 
appearance  of  unforeseen  factors  of  sufficient  importance  to 
produce  a  new  situation,  which  raised  the  old  fundamental 
questions  with  greater  insistence.  The  Constitution  itself  was 
the  first  compromise  and  the  only  one  to  be  lasting.  The 
Missouri  Compromise  was  invalidated  (though  not  made  void) 

s  "The  question  of  the  relation  of  the  States  to  the  Federal  govern 
ment  is  the  cardinal  question  of  our  constitutional  system.  At  every 
turn  of  our  national  development,  we  have  been  brought  face  to  face 
with  it,  and  no  definition  either  of  statesmen  or  of  judges  has  ever 
quieted  it  or  decided  it.  It  cannot,  indeed,  be  settled  by  the  opinion 
of  any  one  generation,  because  it  is  a  question  of  growth,  and  every 
successive  stage  of  our  political  and  economic  development  gives  it  a 
new  aspect,  makes  it  a  new  question."  Woodrow  Wilson,  in  the  North 
American  Review,  187,  684. 


THE  CAUSES  OF  SECESSION  287 

by  the  astonishing  growth  of  the  cotton-culture  and  cotton- 
manufacture.  The  "American  System,"  which  was  to  pro 
vide  for  the  interests  of  the  various  sections,  was  deemed 
unsatisfactory  in  the  South  as  soon  as  it  was  adopted  be 
cause  of  the  severity  of  the  commercial  crisis  in  Europe  just 
previous  to  1830,  whose  influence  on  the  price  of  cotton  the 
South  attributed  solely  to  the  tariff.  The  annexation  of  Texas 
and  the  Mexican  War  added  so  little  land  suitable  for  cotton 
to  the  existing  area  of  the  country  that  it  was  soon  clearly 
apparent  to  the  Southern  leaders  that  the  Compromise  of 
1850  was  on  the  whole  a  victory  for  the  North.  Indeed,  the 
extraordinary  rapidity  with  which  the  available  land  in  these 
enormous  areas  was  occupied  and  in  some  fashion  utilized  made 
it  literally  impossible  to  foresee  what  the  ensuing  five  years' 
growth  would  bring  forward. 

In  1860,  the  Southern  leaders  were  still  as  sure  as  before 
that  there  was  unlimited  wealth  to  be  had  by  the  develop 
ment  of  the  cotton-culture,  but  they  were  certain  that  the 
degree  of  profit  previously  obtained  would  be  inevitably  re 
duced  by  the  lack  of  new  lands  of  the  most  fertile  type,  and 
by  the  enormous  increase  in  the  value  of  slaves  from  $600  in 
1836  to  $1400  in  1856.  The  reopening  of  the  slave-trade  would 
solve  the  difficulty  by  promptly  furnishing  such  cheap  labor 
that  the  fields  already  cropped  and  the  less  fertile  soil  in  the 
South  not  yet  utilized  could  be  tilled  at  an  enormous  profit. 
The  Constitution,  however,  stood  squarely  in  the  way  of  this 
remedy,  for  it  definitely  conferred  on  the  Federal  government 
the  right,  already  exercised,  to  prohibit  the  slave-trade.  New 
land  could  not  be  provided  because  there  was  no  more  land 
in  the  vast  area  of  the  United  States  which  could  be  opened 
to  cotton  into  which  cotton  was  likely  to  go  and,  while  the 
Southern  States  remained  in  the  Union,  there  was  no  pros 
pect  of  the  annexation  of  land  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  The 
extension  of  the  influence  of  the  United  States  in  the  Gulf 
and  in  Central  America  had  been  attempted  in  the  decade 
following  1850,  but  England  and  France  had  determinedly 
interposed  and  had  secured  the  signature  of  such  treaties  as 


288  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

practically  forbade  the  United  States  to  develop  any  vital 
interests  in  the  Gulf  except  in  concert  with  them.  Secession 
would  be  a  remedy  and  perhaps  the  only  one.  "I  want 
Cuba/'  declared  a  Southern  senator,  "I  want  Tamaulipas, 
Potosi,  and  one  or  two  other  Mexican  states ;  and  I  want  them 
all  for  the  same  reason — for  the  planting  and  spreading  of 
slavery.  And  a  footing  in  Central  America  will  wonderfully 
aid  us  in  acquiring  those  states.  .  .  .  Whether  we  can  ob 
tain  the  territory  while  the  Union  lasts,  I  do  not  know;  I 
fear  we  cannot.  But  I  would  make  an  honest  effort,  and  if 
we  failed,  I  would  go  out  of  the  Union  and  try  it  there. ' ' 9 
For,  after  the  cotton  States  had  split  off  from  the  Northern 
States,  whose  industrial  and  maritime  growth  England  found 
dangerous  to  her  supremacy,  England  might  well  look  with 
favor  on  the  scheme  of  a  Southern  Empire  for  the  growing  by 
slave  labor  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  of  that  cotton  on  which  the 
prosperity  of  northern  England  so  entirely  depended.  It 
was  the  political  tie,  the  Constitution,  which  was  the  greatest 
incubus,  and  which  saddled  the  suffering  South  with  tariffs 
and  diplomatic  difficulties.  Nothing  else  stood  in  their  way, 
thought  the  Southerners;  there  were  no  economic,  geograph 
ical,  or  institutional  barriers  in  the  way  of  Southern  great 
ness  and  prosperity.  It  is  this  belief  that  the  political  bond 
was  the  stumbling-block  of  offense  which  is  at  the  root  of  the 
belief  in  the  possibility  and  expediency  of  secession. 

Moreover,  if  the  clash  of  arms  was  ever  to  come,  it  was 
eminently  clear  to  the  Southern  leaders  that  they  must  move 
before  the  disparity  in  size  of  the  North  and  South  should 
become  more  pronounced.  In  1828,  in  1845,  in  1850,  with  the 
Federal  government  really  in  their  hands,  with  the  wealth 
of  the  South  increasing  at  a  phenomenal  rate,  with  a  retarda- 

9  C.  D.  Drake,  Union  and  Anti-Slavery  Speeches,  184.  Morton's 
Southern  Empire  has  much  evidence  pro  and  con  (mostly  pro)  this  idea 
of  expansion.  "In  the  event  of  Southern  secession,  they  contemplated 
a  magnificent  Confederacy  of  slave-holding  States,  including  Cuba, 
Mexico,  and  Central  America."  Hodgson,  Cradle  of  the  Confederacy, 
319.  See  his  interesting  account  of  the  attempt  of  Lopez  in  1850-51  to 
seize  Cuba,  pp.  314  et  seq. 


THE  CAUSES  OF  SECESSION  289 

tion  of  that  growth  hardly  likely,  there  was  little  to  be  gained 
by  war  which  might  not  improbably  be  obtained  by  com 
promise.  It  seemed  certain  that  their  chances  would  be  bet 
ter  at  some  future  time.  Calhoun  had  indeed  solemnly 
warned  the  leaders  in  1847  that  the  South  was,  in  comparison 
to  the  North,  stronger  then  than  it  would  ever  be  again,10 
but  the  growth  of  the  following  decade  was  needed  to  bring 
that  fact  home  to  them.11  The  real  genesis  of  the  actual  fight 
ing  is  to  be  found  in  the  history  of  the  years  1854-1860.  In 
the  debates  over  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill  in  1854,  a  Vir 
ginian  had  exclaimed  in  the  House,  "If  you  restore  the  Mis 
souri  Compromise,  this  Union  will  be  dissolved,"  and  from 
all  sides  had  risen  derisive  mocking  shouts  of  ' '  Oh !  No ! "  In 
the  spring  of  1860,  the  shadow  of  the  coming  crisis  had  al 
ready  fallen  athwart  the  floor  of  the  House.  The  lack  of  new 
territory  from  which  to  make  slave  States;  the  rapid  growth 
of  new  free  States  showed  the  Southerners  that  their  con 
trol  of  the  Senate  was  tottering,  and  to  lose  it  meant  to  them 
the  loss  of  the  only  benefit  they  derived  from  the  Federal 
union, — the  protection  of  their  peculiar  institution  by  the 
Federal  government.  With  the  free  States  in  control  at 
Washington,  with  Northern  sentiment  hostile  to  slavery,  and 
with  public  opinion  strong  against  the  enforcement  of  the 

10  "  Calhoun  in  a  letter  to  a  member  of  the  Alabama  legislature  at 
this  time,  said  that  'instead  of  shunning  we  ought  to  court  the  issue 
with  the  North  on  the  slavery  question';   that  he  would  go  one  step 
farther  and  'force   the   issue   on  the   North.'     'We   are   now   stronger, 
relatively/   said   Mr.   Calhoun,  'than  we  shall  be   hereafter  politically 
and   morally.'"     Hodgson,   The   Cradle  of   the  Confederacy,   273.     The 
letter  was  not  printed  in  Calhoun's  Works.     See   also  the  quotations 
from  the  address  of  a  convention  to  the  people  of   Alabama  on   the 
danger  of  delay,  pp.  331-2. 

11  "All  admit  that  an  ultimate  dissolution  of  the  Union  is  inevitable 
and  we  believe  that  the  crisis  is  not  far  off.     Then  let  it  come  now; 
the  better  for  the  South  that  it  should  be  to-day;  she  cannot  afford  to 
wait.     With  the  North  it  is  different.     Every  day  adds  to  her  sectional 
strength  and  every  day  the  balance  of  power  becomes  less  proportionate 
between  the  two  sections.     In  a  few  more  years,  .  .  .  our  doom  will 
be  sealed."     Charleston  Mercury,  Sept.   18,  1860.     Sherman's  Southern 
friends  told  him  the  same.     See  the  letters  of  W.  T.  Sherman. 


290  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Fugitive- Slave  laws,  every  guarantee  would  disappear,  and 
Mason  and  Dixon's  line  would  become  in  vtery  fact  the 
boundary  between  two  hostile  confederacies.  Nor  did  the 
North  fail  to  perceive  the  real  issue: — that  the  South  dared 
not  risk  longer  delay.12  "The  fault  of  the  free  states  in  the 
eyes  of  the  South/'  wrote  Lowell  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
1 1  is  not  one  that  can  be  atoned  for  by  any  yielding  of  special 
points  here  and  there.  Their  offense  is  that  they  are  free 
and  that  their  habits  and  prepossessions  are  those  of  free 
dom.  Their  crime  is  the  census  of  1860.  Their  increase  in 
numbers,  wealth,  and  power  is  a  standing  aggression.  .  .  . 
What  they  (the  Southerners)  demand  is  nothing  less  than 
that  we  should  abolish  the  spirit  of  the  age.  ...  It  is  the 
stars  in  their  courses  that  fight  against  their  system. ' ' 13 

In  1860,  the  white  population  north  of  Mason  and  Dixon's 
line  and  of  the  Ohio  River  was  about  twenty  millions  and 
that  south  of  the  line  about  eight  millions  with  four  millions 
of  negroes :  and  during  the  past  decade  the  North  had  grown 
41%  and  the  South  27%.  Not  only  were  the  whites  at  the 
North  already  more  than  double  those  at  the  South  in  num 
ber,  but  they  were  increasing  nearly  twice  as  fast  (the  more 
considerable  part  of  the  total  Southern  growth  was  among 
the  negroes),  and  a  decade  hence  the  disparity  might  not  be 
merely  twice  but  thrice  or  even  more!  The  census  also  re- 

12  As  early  as  Dec.   14,   1843,  George  Ticknor  wrote  from  Boston  to 
Sir  Charles  Lyell,  in  London,  "I  would  wait  as  a  Northern  man,  because 
it  is  for  my  interest.     The  South   is  growing  weak,   we   are  growing 
strong.     The  Southern  States  are  not  only  losing  their  relative  conse 
quence  in  the  Union,  but  from  the  inherent  and  manifold  mischiefs  of 
slavery,  they  are   positively  growing  poor.     They  are  falling  back   in 
refinement,    civilization,    and    power.     EVery   year   puts   the   advantage 
more  on  our  side,  and  prepares  us  better  to  meet  the  contest  .  .  .  which 
can  never  be  other  than  formidable  and  disastrous."     Life  and  Letters 
of  Ticknor,  II,  218.     On  Nov.  27,  1860,  he  wrote  again  to  Lyell:     "The 
cry  is  that  the  South  is  in  danger,  because  the  South  is  in  the  minority 
and  is  weak;  and  they  had  better  go  out  of  the  Union  before  they  be 
come  weaker  and  more  feeble  by  the  constantly  increasing  power  of  the 
free  States."     Ibid.,  II,  431.     Ticknor  gives  this  statement  as  something 
currently  known  and  understood  in  Boston. 

13  January  1861. 


THE  CAUSES  OF  SECESSION  291 

vealed  astonishing  facts  about  the  South  which  ill-compared 
with  its  list  of  populous  cities  and  thriving  towns  at  the  North. 
In  Alabama  the  census  recorded  fifteen  towns,  nine  of  which 
had  a  population  of  less  than  a  thousand;  in  Arkansas,  two 
towns;  in  South  Carolina,  three,  besides  Charleston,  with 
more  than  a  thousand  people.  To  the  arguments  of  Helper 
the  census  gave  only  too  accurate  and  prompt  confirmation. 
Only  10,781  families  owned  as  many  as  50  slaves;  1733  men 
owned  the  plantations  on  which  more  than  100  slaves  were 
employed.  In  Virginia,  out  of  a  million  whites,  only  114 
owned  more  than  100  slaves.  Less  than  two  million  whites 
in  the  whole  South  were  in  any  way  concerned  with  slavery ; 
over  six  millions  neither  owned  slaves  nor  derived  direct  bene 
fit  from  their  labor.  "That  this  body  of  three-fourths  of 
the  white  men  of  the  whole  South  should  have  fought  stub 
bornly  for  four  years  to  fasten  on  more  completely  bonds 
which  restricted  them  to  every  inferiority  of  life  is  one  of 
the  most  extraordinary  facts  of  history. "  Had  not  States '- 
rights  feeling  been  so  strong,  had  these  poor  whites  not  under 
stood  that  the  independent  sovereignty  of  the  States  was  at 
issue,  their  adherence  would  scarcely  have  been  given  to  the 
new  Confederacy. 

The  productivity  of  the  two  sections  roughly  divided  on 
Mason  and  Dixon's  line  was  amazingly  different  and  showed 
clearly  the  results  of  the  portentous  development  of  varied 
industry  in  the  North  and  the  unexampled  growth  of  popula 
tion  in  the  district  west  of  Pennsylvania  and  north  of  the 
Ohio  River.  The  South  produced  only  one-eightieth  of  the 
cheese  and  dairy  products;  one-quarter  of  the  wheat,  one- 
fifth  of  the  oats,  one-tenth  of  the  hay,  and  half  of  the  corn ; 
but  two-thirds  of  the  swine,  five-sixths  of  the  tobacco  and 
all  of  the  cane  sugar  and  cotton.  The  total  value  of  the 
manufactured  products  indispensable  to  varied  industry- 
agricultural  implements,  iron  in  all  its  forms,  steam  ma 
chinery,  coal,  lumber,  flour  and  meal,  leather,  all  sorts  of 
cloth,  boots,  shoes,  nails,  paper,  ink,  and  the  like — was  valued 
at  the  South  at  about  seventy-five  million  dollars,  about  one- 


V 

"  292  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

tenth  of  the  value  of  the  products  of  the  North.  The  grand 
total  of  all  Northern  products,  $1,730,330,000,  was  eleven  times 
greater  than  that  of  the  South,  $155,531,000.  Two  and  one- 
half  times  as  many  fighting  men !  Eleven  times  the  ability  to 
produce  everything  needed  for  the  prosecution  of  a  war ! 

How  could  the  Southern  leaders  with  such  facts  staring 
them  in  the  face  begin  a  war  with  the  only  district  within 
three  thousand  miles  of  them  capable  of  supplying  them  with 
the  manufactured  articles  they  must  have  or  of  buying  the 
only  things  they  had  to  sell?  Because  they  believed  Cotton 
was  King !  For  the  best  part  of  a  century  it  had  been  dinned 
into  American  ears  that  the  one  absolutely  indispensable  thing 
upon  which  American  prosperity  rested  was  the  possession  of 
a  medium  of  exchange  with  Europe.  Cotton  had  been  the 
only  commodity  the  country  had  ever  itself  produced  which 
had  in  any  degree  proved  adequate,  and  in  1860  it  was  nearly 
fifty  per  cent  of  the  total  exports  of  the  country  and  itself 
exceeded  by  twenty-five  per  cent  the  total  exports  of  the 
North.  In  addition,  the  exports  of  manufactured  goods 
which  the  North  did  make  were  believed  to  be  dependent  on 
the  use  of  Southern  cotton  in  the  New  England  looms.  With 
the  proceeds  of  the  sale  of  cotton  in  New  England  and  in 
Europe,  the  South  bought  manufactured  goods  from  New 
England,  iron  from  Pennsylvania,  food  from  the  West.  The 
Southern  leaders  could  not  credit,  as  a  supposition  even,  that 
the  North  could  avoid  bankruptcy  in  case  a  war  should  de 
prive  her  at  one  blow  of  her  raw  material,  her  medium  of  ex 
change  with  Europe,  and  her  market  for  manufactured  goods 
in  the  South.  And  if  the  North  could  or  would,  was  Europe 
willing  to  allow  a  war  between  the  North  and  South  to  bring 
her  looms  to  a  standstill  and  turn  the  English  and  French 
operatives  into  the  streets  to  starve?  Where  else  was  nearly 
ninety  million  dollars'  worth  of  cotton  to  come  from?  The 
American  market  for  European  goods  was  by  no  means  es 
sential  to  European  manufacturers;  the  raw  material,  cotton, 
was  indispensable. 

That  the  South  did  not  produce  the  necessities  of  life,  much 


THE  CAUSES  OF  SECESSION  293 

less  the  essentials  for  the  prosecution  of  a  war,  the  leaders 
well  knew.  But  food,  leather,  salt,  medicines,  iron,  arms, 
lead,  powder  could  all  be  secured  in  Europe  in  exchange  for 
cotton.  The  possibility  of  effective  blockade  or  of  real  inter 
ference  by  the  Northern  navy  with  the  Southern  freedom  of 
intercourse  with  Europe,  the  leaders  scouted.  They  counted 
definitely  on  the  ease  and  rapidity  of  transportation.  They 
also  expected  the  foreign  nations  to  recognize  the  new  con 
federacy  as  an  independent  nation  with  promptitude  and 
despatch  as  soon  as  the  alternative  of  recognition  or  no  cot 
ton  was  appreciated.14  As  for  food,  mules,  lead,  leather, 
those  could  all  be  had  in  Missouri  and  in  the  Northwest, 
which  was  tied  fast  to  the  South  by  the  Mississippi  and  its 
tributaries,  and  was  effectually  cut  off  from  the  Eastern 
coast  by  the  mountains.  The  West  might  hesitate  and  haggle 
but  in  the  end  it  would  be  forced  by  circumstances  to  join 
the  South.15  The  adherence  of  the  West,  and  recognition 

i*  "The  policy,  or  at  least  part  of  the  policy  of  South  Carolina  is, 
after  staving  off  war  by  non-action,  to  hold  back  cotton — omnipotent 
cotton — reduce  the  supplies  in  manufacturing  countries — stop  the 
thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  manufactories  in  the  North  and  in 
Europe — until,  by  absolute  force  of  circumstances,  people  will  be  driven 
to  acknowledge  the  independence  of  the  Confederacy,"  Quoted  from 
the  Baltimore  American  by  the  St.  Louis  Republican,  Jan.  16,  1861. 

is  Mr.  Uriel  Wright  in  the  Missouri  Convention  assembled  to  decide 
upon  secession,  said  in  March,  1861 :  "I  see  clearly  that  their  [the 
Southern  leaders']  idea  is  to  secure  the  breadstuff's  and  provisions  of 
the  valley  of  the  West,  and  get  their  manufactured  goods  from  England. 
There  is  the  whole  desire.  That  is  the  desire  and  that  is  the  wish  that 
precipitated  the  cotton  states  into  a  revolution.  It  will  be  a  formida 
ble  idea  to  meet  in  a  readjustment.  These  people — I  mean  the  leaders 
— have  been  in  earnest  about  this  matter  for  a  great  many  years.  The 
idea  started  in  South  Carolina  under  the  dominion  and  power  of  such 
minds  as  McDuffie,  Calhoun,  and  Hayne.  .  .  .  Still,  in  spite  of  the 
temptation — the  glittering  temptation — of  a  Southern  Republic,  whose 
basis  is  cotton,  and  whose  policy  is  free  trade  with  Europe  and  pro 
visions  from  us —  ...  I  am  satisfied  .  .  .  that  ephemeral  power  will 
fade  away  into  thin  air."  Journal  of  the  Missouri  Convention,  211. 

Sam  Tate,  president  of  the  Memphis  and  Charleston  R.  R.,  wrote  to 
a  prominent  official  in  Richmond  on  May  1,  1861:  "There  are  no  pro 
visions  in  the  South — not  enough  for  a  full  supply  for  60  days.  [And 
this  was  May  1861!]  How  are  we  to  get  it?  The  Government  at 
Washington  is  making  important  arrangements  to  take  St.  Louis  and 


294  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

from  Europe;  the  commercial  crisis  in  the  North  evoked  by 
the  loss  of  the  southern  market,  of  cotton  as  raw  material, 
and  as  a  medium  of  exchange  with  Europe;  the  strength  of 
the  States'  rights  party  at  the  North,  and  of  the  Northern 
democrats,  would  probably  prevent  the  North  from  fighting 
at  all,  and  bring  about  a  peaceful  separation.  In  fact,  the 
Southern  leaders  were  confident  that  the  North  would  not 
dare  fight;  it  was  widely  reported  that  Jefferson  Davis  had 
declared  himself  ready  to  drink  all  the  blood  that  would  be 
spilled  over  secession.19  The  control  by  the  South  of  the 
Federal  government  would  give  them  in  the  event  of  Lin 
coln's  election  fully  four  months  for  actual  preparation; 
would  enable  the  Secretary  of  War  to  move  into  the  South 
ern  arsenals,  where  they  could  be  seized,  the  supplies  of 
arms  and  powder  owned  by  the  Federal  government,  which 
would  thoroughly  equip  the  first  Southern  armies  put  into 
the  field  and  deprive  the  Northern  troops  of  the  necessary 
equipment.  If  still  the  war  persisted,  aid  would  come  from 
Europe  by  the  time  it  was  needed. 

Constitutional,  traditional,  historical  defenses  were  not 
far  to  seek.  Nullification,  secession,  States'  rights  had  been 
commonly  proclaimed  in  every  part  of  the  country  too  often 
and  too  recently  to  allow  a  scintilla  of  doubt  as  to  the  le 
gality  of  secession  to  linger  in  Southern  minds.  Indeed,  the 
belief  in  the  validity  of  secession  as  a  constitutional  right  was 
so  widespread  at  the  North  as  to  make  it  doubtful  for  months 

close  the  Mississippi  effectually  against  us  from  Cairo  up.  This  cuts 
off  our  last  hope  for  a  full  supply  of  provisions  and  lead.  By  efficient 
action  now  we  can  save  the  State  of  Missouri  to  the  South  and  keep 
open  an  outlet  to  an  abundant  supply  of  provisions.  .  .  .  The  first  thing 
we  know  we  will  be  out  of  powder,  lead,  and  percussion  caps.  They 
can  be  had  through  Cuba  alone  at  this  time."  Rebellion  Records, 
Series  IV,  Vol.  I,  276. 

William  G.  Eliot,  of  St.  Louis,  wrote  later:  "I  doubt  if  the  South 
ern  Confederacy  would  have  been  attempted  if  the  loss  of  that  State 
[Missouri]  had  been  foreseen,  and  the  plans  of  rebellion  were  as  care 
fully  laid  at  Jefferson  City  (of  which  there  is  now  proof)  as  at  Charles 
ton."  C.  C.  Eliot,  Life  of  W.  G.  Eliot,  163. 

ie  Personal  Memoirs  of  V.  8.  Grant,  I,  178.  Ed.  of  1903.  See  also 
Robin's  Sherman,  56. 


THE  CAUSES  OF  SECESSION 

whether  the  people  would  support  the  Federal  government, 
if  war  should  break  out  upon  that  issue.  From  the  fathers 
of  the  Revolutionary  and  Constitutional  periods  and  in  par 
ticular  from  Calhoun 's  writings,  Hayne's  speeches,  and  the 
incidents  in  South  Carolina  in  1828,  the  leaders  of  the  South 
drew  ample  confirmation  and  justification  of  the  step. 

When  the  decision  to  secede  was  really  taken,  it  is  impos 
sible  to  demonstrate  without  defining  more  accurately  what  is 
meant  by  secession.  If  we  mean  by  secession  the  determina 
tion  to  establish  a  second  confederacy  based  upon  slave  terri 
tory,  the  decision  was  taken  in  all  probability  some  time  just 
previous  to  the  Mexican  War  and  was  constantly  in  the  minds 
of  the  Southern  leaders  as  a  remedy  to  be  applied  with  all 
speed  whenever  the  probability  of  the  loss  of  their  control 
of  the  Federal  government  seemed  imminent.  Without  that 
control  it  was  generally  conceded  that  the  Constitution  and 
all  the  statutes  concerning  slavery  would  be  a  dead  letter  at 
the  North,  arid  that,  to  continue  the  connection  after  that 
moment,  would  be  merely  to  expose  the  South  to  the  definitely 
hostile  legislation  which  none  of  them  doubted  the  North 
would  at  once  utilize  Congress  to  pass.  On  March  4,  1850, 
Calhoun  solemnly  stated  the  alternatives  in  the  Senate: 
"There  should  be  an  open  and  manly  avowal  on  all  sides  as 
to  what  is  intended  to  be  done.  ...  If  you  who  represent  the 
stronger  portion,  cannot  agree  to  settle  them  [the  issues]  on 
the  broad  principle  of  justice  and  duty,  say  so;  and  let  the 
States  we  both  represent  agree  to  separate  and  part  in  peace. 
If  you  are  unwilling  we  should  part  in  peace,  tell  us  so ;  and 
we  shall  know  what  to  do  when  you  reduce  the  question  to 
submission  or  resistance.  If  you  remain  silent,  you  will 
compel  us  to  infer  by  your  acts  what  you  intend."  17  Con 
ventions  in  the  South  in  1849  and  during  the  subsequent  dec 
ade  openly  discussed  the  issue  and  as  openly  decided  in  favor 
of  the  legality  and  expediency  of  secession.18  State  cam- 

"  Works  of  Calhoun,  IV,  672-3. 

i  *  Hodgson's  Cradle  of  the  Confederacy  is  wholly  devoted  to  these 
abortive  attempts  at  organized  secession  before  1800. 


296  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

paigns  were  fought  on  the  desirability  of  continuing  longer 
in  the  Union ;  and  the  breach  by  the  North  of  the  Compromise 
of  1850,  the  failure  to  observe  the  Fugitive-Slave  Law,  the 
refusal  to  "repeal"  the  Missouri  Compromise,  to  accept  the 
Dred  Scott ' '  decisions, ' '  and  the  like,  were  continually  brought 
forward  in  State  after  State  and  in  general  conventions  as 
eventualities  which  would  be  regarded  as  the  signal  for  seces 
sion,  as  proof  that  Southern  control  of  the  Federal  govern 
ment  was  already  lost.  The  election  of  1856,  like  that  of  1860, 
was  fought  over  the  issue  of  union  or  disunion.  Senator 
Mason  declared  that  in  the  event  of  the  election  of  Fremont 
"but  one  course  remains  for  the  South — immediate,  absolute, 
eternal  separation."  Buchanan,  the  Democratic  candidate, 
wrote  in  a  private  letter,  "I  consider  that  all  incidental  ques 
tions  are  comparatively  of  little  importance  in  the  presi 
dential  election  when  compared  with  the  grand  and  appalling 
issue  of  union  or  disunion. " 19  As  in  1850,  and  later  in 
1860,  the  Southern  leaders  were  assembled  in  1856  concert 
ing  the  final  measures  in  case  secession  should  become  neces 
sary.  Soon  after  1850,  the  numerous  military  academies 
founded  at  the  South  and  the  resort  to  them  of  the  youth  of  the 
planter  class  was  significant  proof  of  Southern  determination. 
Secession  was  certainly  not  hatched  in  a  corner;  it  was  no 
secret  conspiracy.  The  intentions  of  the  Southern  leaders 
had  been  solemnly  and  publicly  announced  so  many  times  in 
such  open  fashion  that  the  North  had  really  come  to  believe 
them  simply  the  cry  of  "Wolf,  wolf."  In  actuality,  the 
election  of  Abraham  Lincoln  as  President  of  the  United  States 
was  merely  the  signal  for  secession,  not  its  cause.  At  the 
South  this  was  well  understood.  "When,  in  the  gray  dawn, 
the  waiting  crowds  in  the  streets  of  Charleston  saw  on  the 
bulletins  the  complete  returns  and  knew  that  Lincoln  was 
elected,  a  rousing  cheer  spontaneously  rose  to  their  lips  for  a 
Southern  Confederacy. 

i»  See  these  and  other  quotations  on  this  same  point  from  most  of 
the  leaders,  collected  by  Mr.  Rhodes  in  History  of  the  United  States, 
II,  204-210;  227;  and  passim. 


XXII 
SECESSION  AND  COMPROMISE 

A  MONTH  or  more  before  the  presidential  election  of  1860, 
a  convention  of  Southern  leaders  was  in  session  and  the  pro 
cedure  of  secession  was  thoroughly  discussed,  if  not  definitely 
agreed  upon.  It  was  apparent  that  each  State  must  act  indi 
vidually  and  that  formal  action  would  take  time;  that  the 
North  would  fight  the  leaders  did  not  believe;  and  active 
preparation  for  that  eventuality  was  postponed.  In  Alabama 
and  South  Carolina,  conventions  were  called  and  sat  just 
prior  to  election  day  to  discuss  the  relations  of  the  State  to  the 
Federal  government.  Before  noon  of  the  day  following  the 
election  of  Lincoln,  the  palmetto  flag  had  been  raised  in 
Charleston  amid  ecstatic  cheers;  the  legislature  was  taking 
measures  for  the  military  defense  of  the  State ;  and  the  Fed 
eral  officers  had  resigned.  A  convention  was  called  for  De 
cember  17  to  act  upon  the  crisis.  This  was  of  course  defiance, 
and  the  leaders  now  proposed  to  wait  until  the  attitude  of  the 
President  and  of  the  North  became  clear.  Buchanan,  after 
consultation  with  the  Attorney  General,  made  up  his  mind 
and  advised  Congress  when  it  met  in  December  of  his  de 
termination  to  take  no  active  steps.  He  declared  secession 
unconstitutional  and  the  election  of  Lincoln  no  valid  excuse 
for  the  active  measures  undertaken  in  South  Carolina  against 
the  Federal  government,  but  he  denied  to  both  President  and 
Congress  any  right  to  oppose  secession  by  force.  Practically 
this  meant,  and  so  the  Southern  leaders  read  it,  that  the 
South  had  until  March  4  to  complete  its  plans  and  organiza 
tion  without  interference  from  Washington. 

The  desire  to  achieve  their  purpose  without  war,  the  belief 
that  the  North  would  in  the  end  decline  to  fight,  the  practical 

297 


298  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

certainty  that  they  would  not  be  actively  opposed  for  several 
months  caused  the  Southerners  to  act  deliberately  and  to 
postpone  for  the  time  further  overt  measures.  On  December 
20,  South  Carolina  seceded  and  sent  commissioners  to  "Wash 
ington  to  treat  with  the  Federal  government.  On  January  5, 
a  caucus  of  Southern  leaders  met  at  Washington  in  which  the 
final  measures  were  agreed  upon.  The  States  were  advised 
to  secede  individually,  to  arm  the  militia  with  the  weapons 
in  the  Federal  arsenals  and  to  seize  the  Federal  forts  in 
their  territory;  and  a  general  convention  was  called  to  meet 
at  Montgomery,  Alabama,  in  February.  With  dramatic 
speeches  and  defiant  declarations  that  they  had  been  wronged, 
the  Senators  and  Representatives  of  most  of  the  Southern 
States  "seceded"  from  Congress  during  January;  six  States 
adopted  ordinances  of  secession  during  the  same  month  and 
seized  the  Federal  forts,  arsenals,  supplies,  and  property 
within  their  borders.  There  was  much  rejoicing;  bells  rung, 
guns  fired,  and  a  general  carnival  in  the  streets.  In  some 
States,  the  ordinance  was  solemnly  signed  before  excited 
throngs  in  the  open  air. 

February  was  occupied  with  the  organization  of  the  seven 
seceded  States  into  a  new  confederacy.  The  delegates  met  on 
February  4  and  impressed  A.  H.  Stephens  as  the  "ablest, 
soberest,  most  intelligent  and  conservative  body"  he  had  ever 
been  in.  Within  a  few  days,  they  agreed  upon  an  amended 
form  of  the  Federal  Constitution  which  explicitly  provided 
for  States'  sovereignty,  for  the  "delegation"  of  legislative 
powers,  and  for  the  recognition  of  slavery  as  a  permanent  in 
stitution.  The  President's  term  was  made  six  years  and  he 
was  to  be  ineligible  for  a  second  term;  the  imposition  of  a 
tariff  and  appropriations  for  internal  improvements  were  ex 
plicitly  forbidden;  and  a  serious  attempt  was  made  to  intro 
duce  certain  administrative  reforms  which  the  experience  of 
seventy  years  had  shown  to  be  desirable.  On  February  9, 
Jefferson  Davis  and  Alexander  H.  Stephens  were  chosen 
temporary  President  and  Vice-President,  and  were  formally 
inaugurated  on  the  eighteenth,  though  the  Constitution  was 


SECESSION  AND  COMPROMISE  299 

not  ratified  by  all  the  States  and  did  not  become  permanently 
binding  until  March  11.  Toombs  became  Secretary  of  State 
and  Walker,  Secretary  of  War. 

The  real  purpose  of  the  new  government  and  the  " cause" 
of  secession  were  proclaimed  by  Stephens  in  a  notable  speech. 
"The  new  Constitution,"  he  said  at  Savannah,  "has  put  at 
rest  forever  all  the  agitating  questions  relating  to  our  peculiar 
institution,  African  slavery  as  it  exists  among  us — the  proper 
status  of  the  negroes  in  our  form  of  civilization.  This  was 
the  immediate  cause  of  the  late  rupture  and  revolution.  .  .  . 
Our  new  government  is  founded  upon  exactly  the  opposite 
ideas :  its  foundations  are  laid,  its  corner-stone  rests  upon  the 
great  truth  that  the  negro  is  not  equal  to  the  white  man ;  that 
slavery — subordination  to  the  superior  race — is  his  natural 
and  normal  condition.  This,  our  New  Government,  is  the 
first  in  the  history  of  the  world,  based  upon  this  great  phys 
ical,  philosophical,  and  moral  truth. ' ' 1 

Meanwhile,  at  the  North  and  in  the  border  States,  Vir 
ginia,  Maryland,  Kentucky,  and  Missouri,  all  was  consterna 
tion,  turmoil,  hesitation.  A  feverish  anxiety  to  compromise 
and  at  all  hazards  avoid  war  was  the  dominant  note. 
Scarcely  had  the  intentions  of  South  Carolina  become  plain 
when  offers  of  compromise  appeared  in  the  North.  Both 
Houses  of  Congress  promptly  appointed  committees  to  con 
sider  the  subject  and  upon  them  were  placed  the  most 
prominent  Northern  and  Southern  men  in  each  House.  The 
Senate  Committee  introduced  the  Crittenden  Compromise 
which  provided  for  constitutional  amendments  to  fulfil  the 
Missouri  Compromise  by  the  exclusion  of  slavery  from  the 
Territories  north  of  36°  30';  to  provide  that  when  new  States 
were  to  be  admitted,  the  people  should  decide  upon  the  ques 
tion  of  slavery  or  freedom ;  but  with  a  clause  formally  recog 
nizing  slavery  as  an  institution  entitled  to  protection  by  the 
Territorial  and  Federal  governments.  The  amendments  fur 
ther  explicitly  deprived  Congress  of  any  power  to  interfere 
with  the  transportation  of  slaves  to  the  Territories,  or  in  any 

i  Putnam,  Rebellion  Record,  I,  Documents,  45. 


300  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

way  to  effect  the  status  of  slavery  in  the  States  where  it  ex 
isted.  Unless  the  Federal  government  returned  the  escaped 
slaves,  it  should  reimburse  the  owner  for  his  loss.  The  House 
Committee  later  proposed  amendments  safeguarding  slavery 
in  the  States,  the  repeal  of  the  Personal.  Liberty  Laws,  the 
revision  of  the  Fugitive-Slave  Laws,  and  the  admission  of  New 
Mexico  with  or  without  slavery.  Nor  were  the  attempts  at 
compromise  confined  to  Congress.  Late  in  December  a  con 
ference  of  the  Governors  of  seven  of  the  largest  Northern 
States  met  in  New  York  and  agreed  to  recommend  to  their 
legislatures  the  repeal  of  the  Personal  Liberty  Laws.  Had  it 
been  at  all  clear  that  this  would  have  satisfied  the  South,  every 
Northern  State  would  probably  have  been  willing  so  to  act. 
The  New  York  Legislature  proposed  to  emancipate  the  slaves 
at  national  expense  and  deport  them  to  Africa.  After  the 
publication  of  the  Confederate  Constitution,  there  was  some 
sentiment  in  the  North  in  favor  of  a  general  adoption  of 
that  document  by  the  Northern  States  as  the  easiest  way  of 
settling  the  difficulty.  In  February,  a  conference,  called  by 
Virginia  to  discuss  compromise,  met  at  Washington,  at  which 
delegates  from  all  the  Northern  and  border  States  were  pres 
ent.  Toward  the  close  of  the  month,  it  recommended  to  Con 
gress  a  series  of  proposals  similar  to  the  Crittenden  Com 
promise,  though  somewhat  less  drastic  in  language.  These 
were  discussed  in  the  Senate  and  attempts  were  made  to  re 
fer  them  to  separate  State  conventions  and  even  to  a  national 
constitutional  convention. 

As  it  became  more  and  more  apparent  that  the  formal  pro 
posals  were  not  meeting  with  Southern  approval,  the  North 
ern  leaders  privately  offered  the  Southerners  in  January  to 
pass  at  once  an  act  organizing  New  Mexico  as  a  slave  State,  if 
the  people  of  the  district  would  vote  in  favor  of  it.  This 
was  refused  as  inadequate  on  the  ground  that  it  did  not  cover 
the  territory  hereafter  to  be  acquired.  In  February,  the 
Northern  congressmen  offered  to  organize  at  once  the  rest  of 
the  Louisiana  Purchase  without  any  provision  regarding 
slavery ;  to  pay  for  all  fugitive  slaves  not  returned ;  to  punish 


SECESSION  AND  COMPROMISE  301 

drastically  any  repetition  of  John  Brown's  attempts  to  rouse 
the  slaves;  to  repeal  ail  state  legislation  inimical  to  the  Fugi 
tive-Slave  Act.  They  even  offered  an  amendment  expressly 
forbidding  Congress  to  interfere  with  the  status  of  slavery  in 
the  States. 

The  reason  for  these  frenzied  attempts  to  meet  the  objec 
tions  alleged  by  the  Ordinances  of  Secession  is  to  be  found  in 
the  realization,  now  keen  at  the  North,  of  the  commercial  bene 
fits  of  the  Federal  union  and,  above  all,  the  splendor  of  na 
tionality.  The  vision,  which  had  entranced  the  fathers  of  the 
Republic  and  the  framers  of  the  Constitution,  which  Webster 
had  so  eloquently  described,  had  now  become  a  general  posses 
sion.  The  North  was  utterly  unwilling  to  renounce  it  in 
favor  of  the  older  ideal  of  two  confederacies.  The  calmer 
minds,  too,  saw  that  the  South  was  not  unanimous  upon  the 
issue  of  secession:  that  the  overt  acts  had  been  the  work  of 
the  leaders  and  of  conventions  rather  than  of  spontaneous  agi 
tation.  The  size  of  the  vote  against  secession  in  several  of  the 
States  made  many  conclude  (and  among  them,  Seward)  that 
the  numerical  majority  at  the  South  was  actually  in  favor  of 
Union.  They  saw  also  the  lack  in  the  South  of  the  neces 
sities  for  the  prosecution  of  a  war  and  they  could  not  be 
lieve  that  the  leaders  really  proposed  to  try  the  issue  of 
arms.  Another  large  section  in  the  North  believed  sin 
cerely  in  States '  rights ,  in  the  legality  and  validity  of 
secession,  and  declined  to  admit  the  existence  of  a  power 
in  the  Federal  government  to  coerce  a  State.  To  them,  un 
less  a  compromise  could  be  agreed  upon,  the  destruction  of 
the  Union  was  inevitable,  for  the  South  would  secede  beyond 
a  peradventure  and  leave  the  North  no  resource  but  to  ac 
cept  its  action.  In  the  border  States,  this  party  was  par 
ticularly  strong  and  the  sentiment  against  the  constitutionality 
of  coercion  almost  universal. 

The  Southern  leaders  seem,  however,  to  have  had  from  the 
first  no  intention  of  compromising.  Until  all  should  be 
ready,  until  they  were  assured  that  peaceful  secession  was 
impossible,  they  were  resolved  not  to  push  matters  to  the  ex- 


302  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

treme,  but  they  were  equally  determined  not  to  yield  short 
of  the  complete  legalization  and  protection  of  slavery.  This 
attitude  was  clear  as  early  as  November.  * '  I  am  daily  becom 
ing  more  confirmed,"  wrote  A.  H.  Stephens  on  November  30, 
1860,  "that  all  efforts  to  save  the  Union  will  be  unavailing. 
The  truth  is,  our  leaders  and  public  men  who  have  taken  hold 
of  this  question  do  not  desire  to  continue  it  on  any  terms. 
They  do  not  wish  any  redress  of  wrongs ;  they  are  dis-unionists 
per  se,  and  avail  themselves  of  present  circumstances  to  press 
their  objects."  His  opinion  explains  the  formal  statement 
of  the  Southern  Senators,  made  public  on  December  14,  when 
the  arguments  regarding  compromise  were  as  yet  hardly  be 
gun  in  either  House.  "The  argument  is  exhausted.  ...  In 
our  judgment,  the  Republicans  are  resolute  in  the  purpose  to 
grant  nothing  that  will  or  ought  to  satisfy  the  South."  The 
only  remedy  was  the  formation  of  a  confederacy.  On  De 
cember  22,  Toombs  of  Georgia  telegraphed  his  constituents 
that  he  had  put  the  test  fairly  and  frankly,  that  the  Repub 
licans  had  decided  against  the  claims  of  the  South,  and  that 
nothing  was  left  but  instant  secession.  This  and  other  inci 
dents  soon  convinced  many  that  the  South  did  not  desire  any 
settlement  other  than  separation.  Lincoln  too  was  against 
compromise.  "The  tug  has  to  come,"  he  wrote,  "and  better 
now  than  later."  "A  year  will  not  pass  till  we  shall  have  to 
take  Cuba  as  a  condition  upon  which  they  will  stay  in  the 
Union."  And  indeed,  the  sober,  thoughtful  men  of  both 
parties  had  long  been  coming  to  the  opinion  that  "a  proposi 
tion  which  in  effect  requires  either  party  to  surrender  its  con 
victions — to  act  in  direct  opposition  to  its  principles — is  not  a 
compromise."  Reluctantly  on  March  2,  the  leaders  in  Con 
gress  conceded  the  final  defeat  of  the  only  proposition  which 
had  ever  obtained  much  popular  support,  the  Crittenden  Com 
promise. 

Though  compromise  had  definitely  failed,  it  was  by  no 
means  clear  that  war  would  break  out.  The  inauguration  of 
Lincoln  passed  off  quietly,  and  the  new  President's  address, 
though  firm  and  determined,  was  yet  conservative  in  tone. 


SECESSION  AND  COMPROMISE  303 

Nor  during  March  did  the  situation  outwardly  change.  The 
drilling  and  arming  went  on  at  the  South ;  the  clamor  against 
coercion  continued  at  the  North,  where  a  few  States  only 
mobilized  their  militia.  Lincoln  seemed  as  lacking  in  energy 
and  decision  as  had  Buchanan.  The  reasons  are  not  far  to 
seek.  There  were  first  of  all  dissensions  in  the  Cabinet: 
Seward,  and  Chase,  Lincoln's  rivals  for  the  nomination,  had 
fully  expected  to  take  control  of  policy,  and  time  was  needed 
to  convince  Lincoln  of  their  intentions  and  for  him  to  show 
them  conclusively  who  was  actually  President.  A  graver  dif 
ficulty  lay  in  the  harrowing  doubt  whether  or  not  the  North 
would  support  the  Government  in  an  active  policy  of  coercion 
of  the  seceded  States.  As  yet  the  border  States,  with  Arkan 
sas  and  North  Carolina,  had  not  seceded  and  their  hostility  to 
a  policy  of  coercion  was  only  too  manifest.  Whether  decisive 
action  caused  them  actively  to  join  the  new  Confederacy,  or 
merely  to  decline  to  assist  the  Federal  government,  the  result 
would  be  equally  disastrous.  In  the  first  eventuality,  the  new 
Confederacy,  thus  strengthened,  might  conceivably  be  strong 
:nough  to  win  the  war ;  in  the  second,  a  great  strip  of  neutral 
territory  would  be  interposed  between  the  Northern  and 
Southern  States,  which  would  either  prevent  the  Northern 
armies  from  reaching  the  South  or  would  compel  them  to  oc 
cupy  the  border  States  as  if  they  were  actually  hostile  terri 
tory.  Washington  would  be  at  once  isolated  from  the  loyal 
States,  and  it  seemed  scarcely  probable  that  the  Union  would 
survive  its  capture. 

Nor  was  it  by  any  means  clear  that  the  North  would  sup 
port  a  war.  The  New  York  Tribune,  edited  by  Greeley,  by 
far  the  most  influential  paper  in  the  East  and  the  only  paper 
much  read  in  the  Northwest,  had  for  months  openly  advocated 
peaceful  secession :  ' '  Let  the  erring  sisters  go  in  peace. ' '  The 
Mayor  of  New  York  had  recommended  the  secession  of  that 
city  from  the  State  and  the  opening  of  her  ports  to  the  world. 
Late  in  January  at  a  great  public  meeting  in  New  York,  a 
very  influential  man  declared  against  coercion  and  was  wildly 
led,  while  the  Republican  mayor  of  Philadelphia  had 


japplaude 


304  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

pronounced  publicly,  amid  very  evident  expressions  of  ap 
proval,  against  the  hostility  towards  slavery.  In  March  and 
April,  the  municipal  elections  in  the  North  showed  heavy 
losses  from  the  Republican  majorities  of  the  previous  fall. 
In  Boston,  in  the  home  of  Anti-Slavery,  the  Twenty-ninth 
Annual  Session  of  the  Massachusetts  Anti-Slavery  Society 
was  broken  up  by  a  disorderly  crowd  and  the  Society  next  day 
disbanded.  Indeed,  it  became  evident  that  secession  had  al 
most  produced  a  new  alignment  of  parties.  Until  the  attitude 
of  the  majority  in  the  North  became  clearer,  Lincoln  had  no 
intention  of  calling  for  troops. 

Nor  had  Davis  any  intention  of  taking  steps  hostile  to  the 
Federal  government  until  it  was  definitely  established  that 
negotiation,  diplomacy,  compromise,  or  whatever  other  forms 
of  mediation  or  adjustment  were  available,  had  been  entirely 
exhausted.  The  new  Confederacy  was  of  course  desirous  to 
secure  recognition  of  its  independence  and  sovereignty  with 
out  resort  to  arms,  and  apparently  deemed  such  recognition 
possible  and  probable,  for  in  March  commissioners  appeared 
in  Washington  who  desired  formally  to  submit  credentials  to 
Seward  and  to  discuss  with  him  the  relations  of  the  two  ' '  con 
federacies."  Seward  declined  to  commit  himself  or  the  ad 
ministration  by  even  communicating  with  them  in  his  official 
capacity,  but  for  some  three  weeks  the  inability  of  the  Cabinet 
to  decide  to  act  upon  their  case  one  way  or  the  other  led  the 
Southerners  to  believe  that  events  and  forces  were  working 
in  their  favor.  The  more  warlike  at  the  North  even  began 
to  fear  that  the  predictions  of  the  Southerners  would  come 
true  and  that  the  North  would  not  fight. 

As  usual,  the  larger  issue  presented  itself  in  more  concrete 
form.  The  Federal  forts  in  Charleston  harbor  were  gar 
risoned  by  Major  Anderson  and  Federal  troops.  When  South 
Carolina  seceded,  Anderson  evacuated  the  fort  and  batteries 
on  the  shore  and  posted  himself  in  Fort  Sumter,  which  was  lo 
cated  on  an  island  and  commanded  the  ship  channels  in  and 
out  of  the  harbor.  Naturally,  to  the  South  Carolinians,  drunk 
with  the  wine  of  their  new  found  liberty,  his  presence  was  of- 


SECESSION  AND  COMPROMISE  305 

fensive  and  they  had  earlier  protested  to  Buchanan  and  de 
manded  the  surrender  of  the  fort.  They  had  even  dared  fire 
upon  a  Federal  supply  ship  which  had  attempted  in  January 
to  reprovision  the  fort  and  which  had  in  consequence  re 
turned  without  accomplishing  its  object.  When  Lincoln  be 
came  President,  the  situation  in  the  fort  was  critical:  it  was 
surrounded  and  commanded  by  the  batteries  erected  on  shore ; 
the  food  was  running  low;  and  its  surrender,  reinforcement, 
or  provisioning  was  a  question  of  moment  because  the 
Southerners  had  repeatedly  given  warning  that  either  of  the 
latter  would  be  treated  as  the  signal  for  war.  After  weeks  of 
indecision,  Lincoln  finally  determined  to  provision  the  fort; 
he  could  not  see  the  Union  abandoned  without  at  least  trying 
the  issue  and  certainly  the  provisioning  of  the  fort  was  not 
from  any  reasonable  point  of  view  a  hostile  act,  however  the 
Southerners  might  choose  to  regard  it.  The  commissioners  of 
the  Confederacy  promptly  sent  a  letter  to  Seward  declaring 
the  act  a  declaration  of  war ;  and  at  daybreak  on  April  12,  the 
South  Carolina  batteries  began  the  bombardment  of  Fort 
Sumter.  The  structure  was  old,  and  ill-equipped  for  re 
sistance  ;  and,  after  it  had  been  shot  to  pieces,  the  powder  ex 
hausted  and  further  resistance  made  useless,  Anderson  sur 
rendered  and  evacuated  it  with  the  honors  of  war. 

The  sensation  in  the  North  is  indescribable :  blind  rage  and 
a  desire  to  wipe  out  the  insult  to  the  flag  replaced  the  luke- 
warmness  and  hesitation  hitherto  characteristic.  The  una 
nimity  of  sentiment  in  favor  of  war  was  as  remarkable  as  it 
was  sudden.  Douglas  at  once  waited  on  the  President  and 
promised  his  entire  support.  The  publication  of  his  message 
to  the  country  had  tremendous  effect.  A  great  crowd  went 
out  to  his  home  in  Chicago ;  he  addressed  them  from  a  balcony, 
and  besought  them,  his  voice  choked  with  emotion,  to  stand 
for  the  Union.  " There  can  be  no  neutrals  in  this  war;  only 
patriots  or  traitors.'*  Buchanan  declared  war  inevitable  and 
predicted  that  the  North  to  a  man  would  support  the  govern 
ment. 

He  was  right.     On  April  15,  Lincoln  called  for  seventy-five 


306  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

thousand  volunteers;  on  the  next  day  the  Massachusetts  regi 
ments  mobilized  in  Boston,  and  on  the  following  day,  the  Sixth 
Massachusetts  left  for  Washington.  Passing  through  Balti 
more,  the  troops  were  mobbed  by  the  Secessionists  who  con 
trolled  the  town,  but  succeeded  in  getting  through  to  the 
national  eapitol.  Behind  them  the  wires  were  cut  and  the 
railroad  bridges  burned.  Maryland  had  risen  and  Washing 
ton  was  isolated! 

The  news  came  that  Virginia  had  seceded;  that  Harper's 
Perry  with  its  arsenals  and  its  control  of  the  Potomac  and 
Shenandoah  Valley  had  been  evacuated  and  the  Navy  Yard 
at  Gosport  destroyed.    The  legislatures  of  New  York  and  Ohio 
voted  large  rams  for  the  support  of  the  government ;  a  quarter 
of  a  million  people  held  a  rally  in  Union  Square,  New  York, 
and  solemnly  pledged  themselves  to  the  defense  of  the  Union, 
and  the  departure  for  Washington  of  the  famous  Seventh 
New  York  Regiment  was  the  signal  for  scenes  of  enthusiasm 
and  determination  which  beggar  description.    Rhode  Island 
troops  were  already  on  the  road.    But  the  anxious  President,  j 
marooned  in  Washington,  in  receipt  of  only  occasional  mes-j 
sages  by  couriers,  could  not  believe  in  the  actuality  of  this 
support.    "I  begin  to  believe  there  is  no  North,"  he  said  to 
the  Sixth  Massachusetts.    "The  Seventh  Regiment  is  a  myth. 
Rhode  Island  is  another.    You  are  the  only  real  thing. ' '     The 
def enselessness  of  Washington  was  so  apparent,  the  moral  re-  j 
suit  of  its  loss  so  clear,  that  the  watchword  became  "On  to 
Washington!"    Then  Butler's  Eighth  Massachusetts  Pvcn- 
ment  landed  at  Annapolis,  ignoring  the  protests  of  the  Gover-l 
nor  of  Maryland  against  such  an  "invasion"  of  a  sovereign  | 
State  without  permission,  repaired  the  railroad  trains  disabled 
by  the  Marylanders,  put  the  baggage  on  the  cars,  and  marched 
on  to  Washington,  rebuilding  the  track  as  they  went.    Over 
the  same  route,  troops  soon  poured  in;  the  connection  with 
the  North  had  been  established  and  Washington  was  safe. 

The  city  had  never  been  in  any  real  danger.  The  Con 
federates  were  not  ready  to  move.  In  reality,  the  panic  in 
Washington  was  equaled  only  by  that  in  Richmond  on  Sun- 


SECESSION  AND  COMPROMISE  307 

day,  April  21.  Word  came  that  a  Federal  gunboat  was  steam 
ing  up  the  river.  Bells  rang;  the  congregations  rushed  out 
of  the  churches  to  arms ;  and  not  till  late  at  night  did  the  alarm 
subside  and  the  people  become  thoroughly  convinced  of  their 
safety.  Meanwhile,  in  Charleston,  the  greatest  joy  reigned. 
Russell,  the  famous  war  correspondent  of  the  London  Times, 
wrote  of  "crowds  of  armed  men  singing  and  promenading 
the  streets,  the  battle  blood  running  through  their  veins — 
that  hot  oxygen  which  is  called  'the  flush  of  victory'  on  the 
cheek;  restaurants  full,  reveling  in  barrooms,  elubrooms 
crowded,  orgies  and  carousing  in  tavern  and  private  house,  in 
tap-room  from  cabaret — down  narrow  alleyways,  in  the  broad 
high-way.  Sumter  has  set  them  distraught;  never  was  such 
a  victory;  never  such  brave  lads;  never  such  a  light;  ...  it 
is  a  bloodless  Waterloo  or  Solferiuo. ' ' 2 

2  Diary,  08. 


XXIII 
THE  CIVIL  WAR  AS  A  MILITARY  EVENT 

THE  policy  of  passive  resistance  promptly  adopted  by  the 
Confederacy  had  its  solid  basis  in  diplomacy  and  statesman 
ship  rather  than  in  military  considerations;  but  its  military 
result  was  to  throw  the  war  into  the  Southern  States,  to  force 
the  North  to  become  the  aggressor,  and  made  the  story  of  the 
war  the  tale  of  the  progress  of  the  Northern  "conquest." 
The  most  important  factor,  then,  in  the  military  history  of 
the  Civil  War  is  the  strategical  geography  of  the  United 
States  south  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line.  This  vast  territory 
— about  one-third  of  the  total  area  of  the  country  to-day, 
then  nearly  two-thirds  of  the  settled  States, — is  divided  by 
the  Alleghany  Mountains  into  two  unequal  parts,  each  of 
which  promptly  became  a  theater  of  war.  During  the  first 
three  years  and  more  a  series  of  simultaneous  campaigns  took 
place,  all  directed  toward  the  occupation  of  the  South,  but 
carried  on  by  Northern  armies  in  the  West  and  East  which  be 
cause  of  the  mountains  did  not  attempt  to  keep  in  touch  with 
each  other  or  carry  out  concerted  movements.  The  cam 
paigns  in  Virginia  and  the  campaigns  in  the  West  were 
aimed  at  different  strategic  points.  This  same  difficulty  of 
communication  through  the  Alleghanies,  which  so  hampered 
the  concerted  action  of  the  invaders,  also  made  extremely  dif 
ficult  any  cooperation  of  the  Southern  armies  in  either  field 
and  in  particular  clogged  the  wheels  of  the  machinery  in 
tended  to  provide  Lee's  army  in  Virginia  with  supplies  and 
munitions  of  war.  Many  of  the  first  military  movements 
were  devoted  to  attempts  to  establish  or  prevent  conjunction 
of  forces  in  both  armies,  and  it  is  not  perhaps  going  too  far 

308 


THE  CIVIL  WAR  AS  A  MILITARY  EVENT 


309 


to  say  that  the  character  of  the  war  as  a  whole  was  the  result 
of  the  existence  of  the  Alleghany  Mountains. 

The  fact  that  Washington  was  situated  a  comparatively 
short  distance  from  Richmond,  the  expectation  entertained  by 
both  sides  of  a  sudden  collapse  of  the  opposition  under  so 
striking  a  reverse  as  the  seizure  of  its  capital,  the  belief  of 
each  that  the  other  was  unprepared  to  resist  sudden  invasion, 
all  combined  to  induce  both  to  begin  the  war  in  Virginia  and 
to  conduct  operations  there  with  especial  pertinacity  in  the 
face  of  all  obstacles  and  reverses.  Indeed,  the  enthusiasts  on 
both  sides  could  not  comprehend  why  their  general  could  not 
cross  those  few  miles  of  territory  and  so  end  the  War.  The 
fact  that  the  campaigns  in  Virginia,  with  the  exception  of  a 
few  brilliant  successes  for  both  sides,  were  for  both  a  long 
series  of  striking  reverses,  which  left  the  contending  armies 
in  the  fall  of  1864  no  nearer  the  accomplishment  of  cither's 
desire  than  when  the  War  began,  is  the  most  significant  aspect 
of  this  part  of  the  War  and  is  explained  largely,  if  not  en 
tirely,  by  the  character  of  the  country.  Military  critics  have 
unreservedly  praised  the  generalship  of  Lee  and  have  de 
clared  that  his  ability  alone  maintained  the  defense  in  Vir 
ginia  and  therefore  prolonged  the  War  for  four  years.  Lee's 
defense,  however,  was  based  chiefly  upon  a  detailed  knowl 
edge  of  the  ground  and  a  most  skilful  use  of  the  natural  ad 
vantages  it  afforded  him. 

Virginia  is  a  plain,  sloping  southeast  from  the  Blue  Ridge 
Mountains  to  Chesapeake  Bay  and  intersected  by  numerous 
parallel  rivers,  of  which  the  Potomac,  the  Rappahannock, 
York,  and  James  are  the  most  important.  So  low  is  the  land 
near  the  Bay  that  for  a  considerable  distance  the  shore  of 
the  Bay  and  the  sides  of  the  rivers  are  marshy,  and  land  firm 
enough  for  army  maneuvers  begins  some  miles  from  shore 
about  the  meridian  of  Fredericksburg.  The  possible  field  of 
war  was  thus  narrowed  and  limited  by  nature.  The  rivers, 
moreover,  all  of  them  lying  athwart  an  invader's  path,  af 
forded  the  Northern  armies  the  maximum  number  of  diffi 
culties  in  their  march  overland  on  Richmond,  and  gave  the 


310  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Confederates  the  maximum  opportunities  for  defense  and 
for  assault  at  moments  when  the  nature  of  the  ground  near 
the  river  fords  made  the  deploying  of  any  considerable  part 
of  the  Northern  army  hazardous  in  the  extreme.  The  dis 
trict  Lee  had  to  guard  was  limited,  and  Nature  herself  had 
provided  fortifications  for  him  and  obstacles  for  his  enemies. 
These  same  rivers  had  been  since  colonial  times  the  high 
ways  of  Virginia,  for  all  commodities  were  moved  to  the  Bay 
for  export  and  were  rarely  sent  overland  from  one  part  of 
the  State  to  another.  There  had  never  been  developed,  there 
fore,  any  system  of  roads  running  north  and  south  which  was 
of  real  service  to  either  side.  Days  were  spent  in  making 
roads  across  river  bottoms,  swamps,  and  morasses,  where 
more  soldiers  died  of  malarial  fevers,  dysentery,  and  camp 
diseases  than  were  killed  in  battle.  Then  this  part  of  Vir 
ginia  had  been  normally  devoted  to  growing  tobacco;  agri 
culture  had  declined;  and  food  and  fuel  were  scarce.  Both 
armies  were  speedily  dependent  upon  supplies  brought  to 
them  and  found  it  extremely  difficult  to  procure  in  Virginia 
enough  horses,  mules,  or  wagons  even,  to  get  the  supplies  from 
the  railroad  to  the  camps.  The  invaders  were  compelled  to 
carry  everything.  The  war  in  the  East  indeed  soon  de 
pended  for  its  prosecution  at  all  upon  the  smooth  working  of 
the  immensely  complicated  administrative  machine  required 
to  supply  and  move  the  Northern  army  under  the  geograph 
ical  conditions.  In  fact,  the  comparative  inaction  of  the  first 
two  years  was  almost  entirely  due  to  the  imperative  need 
of  a  machinery  which  only  time  and  experience  could  render 
really  efficient;  and  the  operations  undertaken  were  such  as 
the  limited  resources  of  that  machinery  seemed  to  render  pos 
sible.  McClellan's  continual  complaint  was  that  he  was  not 
given  enough  men  properly  equipped  for  the  task  assigned 
him.  To  the  geographical  difficulty  of  fighting  at  all  in  Vir 
ginia  may  be  assigned  much  of  the  responsibility  for  the  fail 
ure  of  the  Union  armies  to  wage  war  more  successfully  in  the 
East. 

This  same  configuration  of  the  field  of  war,  however,  gave 


THE  CIVIL  WAR  AS  A  MILITARY  EVENT  311 

both  sides  enormous  natural  advantages  of  which  they  were 
not  slow  to  avail  themselves,  but  which,  as  used  by  Lee,  af 
forded  the  Confederates  vastly  more  assistance  than  they  did 
the  Federals.  The  control  of  Chesapeake  Bay  and  of  the 
rivers  gave  the  Federal  gunboats  and  transports  such  ready 
access  to  the  interior  that  the  Union  generals  could  land  their 
armies  where  they  pleased,  in  nearly  any  part  of  eastern  Vir 
ginia  and  could  maintain  them  there  by  provisions  from  the 
fleet.  The  early  seizure  of  Maryland  gave  the  Union  con 
trol  of  a  second  side  of  the  field  of  war,  and  maintained  the 
indispensable  connections  with  the  North  and  West.  This, 
however,  was  rather  a  possible  advantage  snatched  from  the 
Confederates  than  a  positive  assistance  to  the  Federals. 

Of  a  very  different  sort  was  the  assistance  derived  by  the 
Confederates  from  the  Shenandoah  Valley.  The  Blue  Ridge 
occupied  one  whole  side  of  the  field  of  war  and  the  numerous 
gaps  made  entrance  to  it  or  exit  from  it  easy  for  both  armies. 
Its  northern  end  debouched  in  Pennsylvania  and  made  it  a 
protecting  screen  for  an  invasion  of  the  North  by  the  Confed 
erates  ;  from  its  center  an  army  advancing  through  Manassas 
or  Centerville  and  across  Bull  Run  could  menace  Washing 
ton  directly;  while  an  army  fleeing  from  pursuit  could  slip 
in  one  gap  and  no  one  know  from  which  of  the  many  others 
it  would  emerge.  From  this  vantage  point  Jackson,  Stuart, 
and  Early  threatened  Washington  or  harried  the  rear  of  the 
Union  armies  till  the  last  year  of  the  War.  Through  it  Lee 
twice  attempted  to  invade  the  North;  in  its  defiles,  he  twice 
eluded  his  pursuers,  who  were  between  him  and  the  Confeder 
ate  lines,  and  reached  Richmond  in  safety.  Aside  from  the 
beaten  track  of  the  contending  armies,  the  pursuits  of  peace 
long  went  on  uninterrupted  and  all  through  the  years  from 
1861  to  1864  priceless  loads  of  supplies  were  drawn  from  the 
fertile  fields  of  the  Valley  for  Lee's  army.  In  addition,  the 
Valley  enabled  the  Confederates  to  threaten  the  communica 
tions  of  the  North  with  the  West  via  the  Potomac  River  Valley 
and  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad,  which  crossed  the  river 
and  the  Valley  roads  at  Harper's  Ferry. 


312  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Indeed  Harper's  Ferry,  Manassas,  and  Centerville,  con 
trolling  the  most  direct  roads  from  the  Valley  to  Washing 
ton;  and  Fortress  Monroe  at  the  mouth  of  the  James  Eiver 
were  the  only  strategic  points  in  the  triangular  field  of  the 
Virginia  War.  There  were  in  fact  no  other  strategic  points 
of  first  importance  to  struggle  for,  and  the  long  campaigns 
were  a  series  of  attempts  by  the  Union  armies  to  reach  Rich 
mond  by  passing  a  few  miles  west  or  east  of  the  point  of  the 
last  rebuff,  or,  on  the  part  of  the  Confederates  to  try  once 
more  a  dash  on  Washington  or  on  Philadelphia  through  the 
Shenandoah  Valley.  The  armies  were  too  well  matched;  the 
valor  of  each  too  great ;  the  skill  of  the  generals  too  consider 
able  to  make  the  weary  years  of  strife  more  than  a  draw. 
The  War  was  not  won  by  the  Virginia  campaigns,  but,  as 
Sherman  early  predicted,  by  the  western  armies. 

The  Mississippi  Valley  possessed  many  strategic  points  of 
the  utmost  consequence  to  the  Union.  The  Ohio  River,  deep, 
swift,  and  almost  fordless,  flowing  between  steep  banks  across 
almost  the  entire  width  of  the  country  would  have  been  a 
splendid  boundary  for  defense  and  would  have  given  the  Con 
federates  a  virtual  fortification  from  which  Ohio,  Indiana, 
and  Illinois  could  have  been  harried  at  will.  Missouri  con 
trolled  the  junction  of  the  Ohio,  of  the  Missouri,  and  of  the 
Illinois  with  the  Mississippi,  and  paralleled  the  whole  western 
side  of  the  strong  Union  State  of  Illinois  and  the  southern 
side  of  Iowa.  Should  it  join  the  Confederacy,  the  South  would 
control  the  whole  of  the  navigable  waterways  of  the  Middle 
West  and  would  be  provided  with  splendid  roads  into  the  very 
heart  of  the  anti-slavery  territory.  The  loss  of  Kentucky, 
of  West  Virginia,  and  of  Missouri  to  the  South  in  the  first 
months  of  the  War  was  of  far  greater  significance  than  has 
been  supposed.  While  the  military  operations  concerned  with 
their  seizure  were  slight  in  strategy  and  of  little  tactical  im 
portance,  the  result  upon  the  general  position  of  the  South  was 
equal  to  the  winning  of  any  single  great  battle  of  the  War. 
The  chance  of  meeting  the  Northern  armies  along  the  Ohio, 
far  from  the  center  of  the  Confederacy,  was  lost;  and  only 


THE  CIVIL  WAR  AS  A  MILITARY  EVENT  313 

Forts  Henry  and  Donelson  kept  the  Federal  gunboats  out  of 
the  Tennessee  and  Cumberland,  rivers  which  were  navigable 
indeed  far  enough  south  to  furnish  a  waterway  into  the  very 
heart  of  the  Confederacy.  With  the  loss  of  Missouri  went 
the  control  of  the  upper  Mississippi,  the  Missouri,  and  the 
mouth  of  the  Ohio.  Practically,  the  great  depth  of  the 
Mississippi  cut  the  western  part  of  the  Confederacy  into  two 
parts,  and  prevented  armies  east  of  the  river  from  cooperating 
effectively  with  the  troops  west  of  it.  The  hostility  of  Mis 
souri  kept  Arkansas  on  the  qui  vive;  while  Texas  and  Louisiana 
were  not  sufficiently  populous  to  maintain  armies,  even  had 
the  character  of  the  country  not  made  military  campaigns  in 
the  marshes  and  bayous  impracticable.  From  them  must 
come  supplies  and  recruits.  The  field  of  war  in  the  West 
then  was  limited  by  Nature  and  by  circumstances  to  the  land 
south  of  central  Kentucky,  west  of  the  mountains,  and  east  of 
the  Mississippi. 

The  strategic  points  were  chiefly  those  controlling  the  lines 
of  communication  north  and  south,  and  east  and  west.  The 
rivers  first  engaged  attention.  It  became  at  once  clear  to  the 
Northern  generals  that  the  possession  of  the  Mississippi  would 
prevent  the  South  from  drawing  men  and  supplies  from  the 
Western  States ;  and  permit  the  provisioning  and  relieving  of 
the  western  armies  by  the  North  much  more  safely  than  the 
railroads  would  have  allowed.  The  moral  effect  of  its  loss 
could  not  fail  to  be  tremendous.  To  advance  along  the  Ten 
nessee  and  Cumberland  Kivers,  however,  was  more  likely  to 
be  decisive,  for  such  a  movement  menaced  the  east  and  west 
connections  of  the  Confederacy.  The  Civil  War  was  one  of 
the  first  to  be  fought  with  aid  of  the  telegraph  and  railroad, 
and  their  value  as  military  forces  had  not  been  entirely  ap 
preciated.  It  so  happened  that  while  the  system  of  trunk 
lines  running  in  all  directions  naturally  developed  by  North 
ern  trade  were  of  immense  strategic  importance,  the  majority 
of  Southern  railroad  lines  were  nearly  valueless  from  a  mili 
tary  point  of  view.  There  were  only  about  9,000  miles  of 
track  south  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line.  Most  of  the  lines 


314  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

were  short  spurs  to  the  coast  or  to  a  shipping  point  on  some 
river,  and  the  majority  of  them  were  single  track  and  narrow 
gauge.  From  Virginia  no  trunk  line  ran  south  to  Charles 
ton  and  Atlanta,  and  there  was,  indeed,  only  one  trunk  line 
running  east  and  west  that  was  likely  to  be  of  any  conse 
quence.  The  proximity  of  Washington  and  Richmond  had, 
however,  determined  the  chief  field  of  war  and  the  communi 
cations  between  Virginia  and  the  country  further  south  be 
came  at  once  of  extraordinary  military  importance.  The 
knowledge  that  the  army  in  Virginia  must  be  fed  and  clothed 
from  a  distance,  and  must  be  supported  promptly  by  fresh 
troops  in  case  of  disaster,  made  the  Cumberland  Gap  and 
its  roads  and  railway  seem  almost  as  important  a  point  to 
maintain  as  Richmond  itself.  Through  this  Gap  ran  the  Dan 
ville  and  Ohio  Railroad,  the  only  east  and  west  trunk  line 
joining  Memphis,  Atlanta,  Charleston,  and  Richmond.  The 
railroads  from  Memphis  to  Richmond  and  from  Charleston 
and  Atlanta  joined  at  Chattanooga ;  the  roads  north  from  Mo 
bile  and  New  Orleans  crossed  the  line  from  Memphis  to  Chat 
tanooga  at  or  near  Corinth.  Through  the  Cumberland  Gap 
supplies  and  troops  must  reach  Lee  or  they  would  not  reach 
him  at  all.  Through  that  Gap  the  Southern  army  in  the 
West  must  cooperate  with  the  army  in  Virginia  or  the  two 
would  be  separated  and  crushed  singly.  To  maintain  that 
connection  it  was  absolutely  essential  to  hold  both  Corinth  and 
Chattanooga. 

The  campaign  of  1861  in  the  West  having  given  the  Union 
troops  the  rivers  and  the  States  of  Missouri,  Kentucky,  and 
Western  Virginia  (admitted  as  a  State  in  1863),  Grant  and 
Sherman  prepared  to  move  down  the  Tennessee,  cut  the  rail 
road  at  Corinth  and  at  Chattanooga,  and  thence  invade  Vir 
ginia  from  the  rear  through  the  Cumberland  Gap.  Simul 
taneously,  the  gunboat  flotilla  began  the  task  of  reducing  the 
Mississippi  from  the  north,  while  Farragut  and  the  fleet  as 
sailed  its  mouth  at  New  Orleans.  By  the  end  of  April  1862, 
the  river  was  in  Northern  hands  as  far  south  as  Memphis; 
Grant  had  taken  the  forts  guarding  the  passage  of  the  Ten- 


THE  CIVIL  WAR  AS  A  MILITARY  EVENT  315 

nessee  and  Cumberland,  had  fought  the  battle  of  Shiloh  and 
established  himself  in  southern  Tennessee  ready  to  move  on 
the  railroad  connections;  and  New  Orleans  was  in  the  hands 
of  Farragut  and  Butler.  Grant  and  Sherman  were  now  or 
dered  to  take  Corinth  and  Memphis,  which  was  soon  done, 
and  then  were  ordered  to  advance  with  Porter  and  his  gun 
boats  on  Vicksburg  down  the  river ;  cooperate  with  Butler  and 
Farragut,  advancing  up  the  river;  concentrate  on  Vicksburg 
and  so  clear  the  Mississippi  of  Confederates.  Buell,  soon  re 
placed  by  Rosecrans,  was  at  the  same  time  ordered  to  lay 
siege  to  Chattanooga.  But  the  success  of  the  earlier  months 
did  not  continue  and  the  second  half  of  the  year  1862  saw 
the  Northern  armies  everywhere  at  a  standstill:  McClellan 
outmanoeuvered  along  the  James,  nearly  defeated  at  Antietam, 
outgeneraled  by  Lee's  masterly  retreat,  and  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac,  now  under  Burnside,  dreadfully  cut  to  pieces  at 
Fredericksburg ;  in  the  West,  all  the  armies  completely  check 
mated.  Indeed,  not  until  July  1863,  did  Grant  and  Sherman 
prevail  at  Vicksburg  and  secure  full  control  of  the  river,  and 
only  the  massing  of  troops  at  Chattanooga  some  months  later 
under  Grant,  Sherman,  and  Thomas  sufficed  to  clear  the  Gap 
and  cut  the  communications  of  the  South  with  Virginia.  By 
this  time,  a  direct  line  had  been  finished  through  North  Caro 
lina  and  the  loss  of  the  Gap  was  not  so  decisive  a  blow  as  it 
would  have  been  a  year  earlier.  Despite  Vicksburg  and  Chat 
tanooga,  despite  the  decisive  repulse  of  Lee  at  Gettysburg  in 
July  1863,  where  his  second  attempt  to  invade  the  North 
was  frustrated  by  Meade,  it  was  clear  that  in  Virginia  at 
least  the  Northern  army  was  not  appreciably  nearer  Rich 
mond,  and  that  the  losses  in  the  West  would  not  of  themselves 
demolish  the  Confederacy.  Military  movements  based  upon 
the  new  position  of  the  western  armies  became  indispensable. 
After  much  discussion,  it  was  decided  that  Grant  should, 
as  before,  advance  on  Richmond  from  the  North;  Sheridan 
should  lay  waste  the  Shenandoah,  to  prevent  its  further  use 
as  a  base  of  operations  and  of  supplies;  Sherman  should  ad 
vance  on  Atlanta,  march  across  Georgia  to  the  Sea,  proving 


316  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

the  vulnerability  of  the  Confederacy,  and  then,  advancing 
north  through  South  Carolina  and  North  Carolina,  take  pos 
session  of  the  country  on  whose  support  Lee  was  depending, 
and  so  in  the  end  reach  his  rear.  Thomas  was  left  behind 
in  Tennessee  to  keep  Hood's  army  in  sight  and  prevent  his 
interference  with  Sherman.  Every  campaign  was  successful 
except  that  of  Grant,  who  was  thrown  back  again  and  again 
by  Lee's  veterans  in  a  series  of  battles  which  experts  then 
and  since  pronounced  bad  generalship  to  have  fought  at  all. 
So  extended  a  series  of  operations,  however,  consumed  the 
whole  year  and  it  was  not  until  the  spring  of  1865  that  the 
final  moves  of  the  game  could  be  made.  Grant,  having  already 
shifted  his  operations  to  the  James,  closed  in  on  Richmond 
from  the  east  and  south;  Sherman  advanced  through  North 
Carolina,  driving  Johnston  before  him ;  Thomas 's  army  scaled 
the  Cumberland  Gap,  and  Lee  found  himself  completely  sur 
rounded.  He  abandoned  Richmond  and  tried  to  retreat  into 
the  mountains,  where  he  could  have  resisted  indefinitely,  but 
Grant  was  too  quick  for  him,  and  in  April  1865,  the  impend 
ing  surrender  took  place  at  Appomattox. 


XXIV 
WHY  THE  NORTH  WON 

THE  physical  and  economic  preponderance  of  the  North  over 
the  South — two  and  one-half  times  as  many  fighting  men, 
eleven  times  the  productivity1 — could  not  fail  ultimately  to 
decide  the  issue,  should  the  South  be  unable  to  beat  the 
Northern  armies  or  to  obtain  assistance  from  Europe.  From 
the  outset  this  was  clear  to  the  Southern  leaders.  Thanks 
to  the  Southern  sympathies  of  the  Secretary  of  War,  the 
available  supplies  in  the  hands  of  the  Federal  government 
in  1861  were  early  seized  by  the  Southerners;  thanks  to  the 
hesitation  of  the  North  to  believe  in  the  reality  of  secession, 
the  South,  it  was  seen,  was  drilled,  and  prepared  long  before 
the  North  as  a  whole  had  decided  to  act.  The  expectation 
was  that  the  Southern  armies  would  be  able  to  defeat  the 
Northern  and  perhaps  invade  the  North  itself,  while  the 
failure  of  the  supply  of  cotton  and  the  lack  of  a  medium 
of  exchange  with  Europe  would  bankrupt  Northern  industry, 
bring  Europe  to  the  aid  of  the  South,  and  compel  the  West 
to  sell  to  the  South  on  her  own  terms  or  face  commercial 
ruin. 

The  first  great  blow  to  the  Southern  cause  was  the  failure 
of  the  border  States,  Missouri  and  Kentucky,  to  secede  or 
to  defend  themselves  against  the  first  movements  of  Union 
troops.  The  northern  boundary  of  the  swift,  unfordable  Ohio 
was  lost  to  the  South.  With  it  went  the  control  of  the 
navigation  of  that  great  river,  and  the  possibility  of  flanking 
the  great  State  of  Illinois,  of  threatening  invasion  of  the 
West,  and  of  thus  weakening  the  Northern  armies  before 

i  Supra,  p.  290-2. 

317 


318  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Lee.  The  whole  aspect  of  the  War  was  changed  in  a  moment 
by  the  loss  in  May  1861,  of  Missouri,  Kentucky,  and  West 
ern  Virginia.  The  next  crushing  blow  fell  when  it  became 
evident  that  the  growth  of  the  railroads  in  the  last  decade 
had  furnished  the  Ohio  Valley  and  the  Northwest  a  high 
way  to  the  Eastern  market  as  cheap  and  much  more  rapidly 
traversible  than  that  which  the  Mississippi  had  afforded 
them  to  the  South.  Moreover,  the  Eastern  market  was  in 
finitely  larger  than  the  Southern  and  hence  a  better  place 
in  which  to  sell.  The  East  produced  itself  most  of  the  manu 
factured  goods  the  West  desired  and  it  was  therefore  a 
better  market  to  buy  in  than  the  South,  which  could  give 
its  creditors  only  exchange  on  the  East  or  on  London  and 
could  furnish  them  goods  only  after  the  delay  and  expense 
of  importation.  In  1850,  the  lack  of  adequate  facilities  for 
transportation  to  the  Eastern  markets  must  perforce  have 
compelled  the  West  to  depend  upon  the  Southern  markets ;  in 
1860,  when  the  War  actually  broke  out,  the  West  was  able 
for  the  first  time  to  find  a  market  for  her  own  produce  in 
the  East. 

Although  the  direct  trade  with  the  West  helped  the  East, 
the  outbreak  of  the  War  was  a  great  economic  blow,  for  the 
South  had  bought  in  the  winter  of  1860-61,  with  the  usual 
arrangement  for  future  payment,  three  hundred  million 
dollars '  worth  of  goods  in  the  North.2  The  commencement 
of  hostilities  of  course  had  the  effect  of  a  repudiation  of  the 
entire  debt.  The  New  York  firms  alone  lost  one  hundred  and 
sixty  millions  as  a  result  of  secession;  in  1861  six  thousand 
Northern  firms  actually  failed  for  sums  over  $5,000  and  it  was 
calculated  that  an  equal  number  failed  for  liabilities  less  than 
that  sum,  with  a  total  almost  one-third  as  great.  The  firms 
which  did  not  actually  fail  were  in  every  way  crippled  and 
found  themselves  almost  as  badly  off  as  during  the  Panic  of 

2  The  financial  and  economic  effects  of  the  War  have  been  adequately 
dealt  with  hy  Professor  E.  D.  Fite  in  Social  and  Industrial  Conditions 
During  the  Civil  War.  New  York,  1910.  Chapter  V  is  devoted  to  the 
commercial  conditions  here  referred  to. 


WHY  THE  NORTH  WON  31d 

1857.  Retrenchments  of  individual  expenses  due  to  fear  of 
the  War's  results  or  possible  failure  were  responsible  for  a 
great  falling  off  of  sales  and  for  a  consequent  difficulty  among 
wholesalers  and  manufacturers  of  placing  new  orders.  In 
deed,  a  commercial  crisis  of  magnitude  prevailed  throughout 
the  North  during  1861  and  1862  and  it  combined  with  the 
inactivity  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  and  the  "unconsti 
tutional  powers ' '  exercised  by  Lincoln  to  make  the  War  highly 
unpopular. 

But  the  War  itself  set  in  motion  economic  forces  which 
soon  solved  the  chief  difficulties.  The  army  and  navy  ab 
sorbed  many  of  the  hands  thrown  out  of  work.  The  new 
factories  needed  to  supply  the  army,  the  administrative 
offices  at  Washington,  and  other  multifarious  activities 
created  by  the  conflict  began  gradually  to  provide  for  the 
rest.  Everything  it  purchased  the  government  paid  for; 
nearly  everything  made  in  the  North  the  government  bought ; 
the  army,  the  navy,  the  clerks  and  officials  of  all  grades  and 
ranks  received  wages  or  salaries.  The  expense  was  enormous ; 
the  financing  of  the  war3  was  a  great  problem  on  the  whole 
skilfully  handled;  but  the  fact  must  not  be  overlooked  that 
the  whole  North  was  employed  by  the  Federal  government 
directly  or  indirectly  and  was  paid  for  its  services  at  prices 
much  higher  than  any  which  had  ever  been  seen  in  the 
country  before.  Even  those  persons  who  themselves  loaned 
the  money  found  the  government's  bonds  good  investments 
and  received  at  once  high  rates  of  interest.  The  individuals 
then  alive  benefited  unquestionably  from  the  War.  "We  are 
only  another  example/'  wrote  John  Sherman,  "of  a  people 
growing  rich  in  a  great  war.  .  .  .  This  is  not  a  mere  tem 
porary  inflation  caused  by  paper  money  but  is  a  steady 
progress  and  rests  almost  entirely  upon  actual  capital." 
Great  sums  were  spent  in  luxuries :  *  "  We  are  clothed  in 

3  Any  one  who  hopes  to  understand  the  financing  of  the  War  must 
read  carefully  tTie  biographies  of  Jay  Cooke. 

*  See  the  quotations  given  by  Rhodes,  History  of  the  United  Ktatcs, 
V,  198-209;  and  the  detailed  evidence  quoted  by  Fite,  opp.  tit.,  259-274, 


320  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

purple  and  fine  linen,"  said  the  Chicago  Tribune.  The  South 
had  expected  the  economic  crisis  caused  by  secession  to  bank 
rupt  the  North,  and  the  War  was  actually  making  the  North 
richer,  stronger,  larger  than  before !  This  incontestable  pros 
perity  enabled  the  North  to  bear  heavy  taxation  without 
actually  suffering.  The  great  bulk  of  the  cost  of  the  War 
was  foisted  upon  posterity,  thanks  to  the  very  bonds  whose 
sale  provided  capitalists  with  a  good  investment  for  their 
money  in  war-time  and  allowed  the  government  practically  to 
subsidize  industry  at  the  North  on  an  enormous  scale. 

The  expectations  entertained  by  the  South  of  assistance 
from  England  and  France  did  not  materialize,  chiefly  be 
cause  cotton  was  not  king.  While  large  and  influential  sec 
tions  of  the  English  people  favored  the  Southern  cause,  the 
government  was  loath  to  act  until  the  ability  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy  to  maintain  itself  was  apparent.  Unquestion 
ably,  too,  the  sagacity  and  ability  of  C.  F.  Adams,  the  United 
States  Ambassador  to  Great  Britain,  was  instrumental  in 
preventing  prompt  action  in  favor  of  the  South,  and  in 
delaying  a  decision  until  both  England  and  France  concluded, 
as  the  Confederate  agents  were  compelled  to  report,  that  the 
probabilities  of  the  restoration  of  the  Union  outweighed  "the 
wisdom,  energy,  and  completeness"  of  the  administrative 
system  established  at  Richmond.5  The  expected  pressure 
upon  foreign  governments  caused  by  the  need  for  cotton 
was  long  postponed,  because,  in  the  spring  of  1861,  the 

with  the  authorities  cited.  The  N ew  "York  Independent,  June  25,  1864, 
Baid:  "Who  at  the  North  would  ever  think  of  war,  if  he  had  not  a 
friend  in  the  army,  or  did  not  read  the  newspapers?  Go  into  Broad 
way,  and  we  will  show  you  what  is  meant  by  the  word  'Extravagance.' 
Ask  Stewart  about  the  demand  for  camel's  hair  shawls,  and  he  will 
say  'monstrous.'  Ask  Tiffany  what  kind  of  diamonds  and  pearls  are 
called  for.  He  will  answer  'the  prodigious,'  'as  near  hen's-egg  size  as 
possible,'  'price  no  object.'  What  kind  of  carpetings  are  now  wanted? 
None  but  'extra.'  Brussels  and  velvets  are  now  used  from  basement 
to  garret."  The  correspondent  of  the  London  Times  was  amazed  to 
read  the  news  in  the  papers  of  great  losses  at  the  front  and  yet  find 
that  "the  signs  of  mourning  were  hardly  anywhere  perceptible;  the 
noisy  gayety  of  the  town  was  not  abated  one  jot."  Cited  by  Fite,  259. 
5  Richardson,  Messages  and  Papers  of  the  Confederacy,  II,  53. 


WHY  THE  NORTH  WON  321 

European  manufacturers  had  nearly  a  year's  supply  of  cotton 
on  hand.  Long  before  this  supply  was  exhausted,  the  general 
failure  of  the  grain  crops  throughout  Europe  caused  a  de 
mand  for  food-stuffs  literally  unprecedented  since  the  Na 
poleonic  wars.6  England,  even  then  unable  to  feed  herself 
and  dependent  on  importation,  found  her  usual  sources  of 
supply  either  non-existent  or  inadequate  and  was  forced  to 
seek  some  new  supply  of  food.  In  that  very  year  of  Euro 
pean  scarcity,  the  West  harvested  the  largest  crops  of  its 
history ; 7  the  new  railroads  quickly  and  cheaply  landed  the 
crop  at  New  York;  whence  it  was  shipped  to  England  and 
found  ready  sale.  The  North  possessed  in  fact  the  only 
available  supply  of  a  commodity  which  Europe  needed  far 
more  than  it  did  cotton.8  The  lack  of  cotton  as  a  medium  of 
exchange  with  Europe  was  scarcely  felt.  The  Emancipation 
Proclamation,  issued  in  September  1862,  to  take  effect  Jan 
uary  1,  1863,  seems  to  have  played  an  important  part  in 
deciding  the  European  nations  to  decline  to  recognize  the 
Confederacy.  While  the  object  of  the  War  as  stated  by 
Lincoln  and  others  was  primarily  and  perhaps  exclusively 
to  perpetuate  the  political  ties  created  by  the  Constitution, 
England  and  France  had  felt  that  the  issue  was  chiefly  one 
of  expediency  and  not  of  principle.  When,  however,  the 
Northern  government  pledged  itself  to  the  principle  of  eman 
cipation,  public  opinion  manifested  itself  too  clearly  in  favor 
of  the  Union  in  Europe  for  the  governments  to  disregard  it. 
All  hope  of  recognition  was  destroyed  by  the  victories  of 
Vicksburg  and  Gettysburg. 

e  The  English  wheat  crop  had  averaged  about  16  million  quarters; 
fell  in  I860  to  13  million,  in  1861  to  11  million,  and  was  in  1862  only 
12  million,  and  in  1863  only  14  million.  Fite,  Social  and  Industrial 
Conditions,  18  note. 

7  The  increase  of  the  crop  in  the  loyal   States  was   40   millions 
bushels  and  the  cessation  of  trade  with  the  South  added  10  millions 
more,  available  for  export. 

8W.  E.  Forster  stated  in  the  House  of  Commons:     "When  they  were 
asked  to 'go  to  war  for  merely  selfish  purposes,  to  procure  cotton,   it 
was  allowable  to  ask,  'What  would  be  the  cost  of  the  war  in  corn? 
Cited  by  Fite,  p.  21. 


322  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Meanwhile,  the  expectation  that  the  South  would  be  able 
to  buy  in  Europe  with  King  Cotton  nearly  if  not  quite 
everything  she  would  require  also  was  crushed  by  the  totally 
unexpected  efficiency  of  the  blockade  of  Southern  ports 
established  by  the  Northern  navy.  Although  the  South  had 
neither  navy  nor  merchant  marine  and  had  shipped  her  cotton 
to  Europe  in  Northern  or  English  bottoms,  she  knew  that  the 
Federal  government  had  comparatively  few  ships  in  com 
mission  in  the  spring  of  1861,  and  deemed  it  impossible  for 
such  a  handful  to  blockade  in  a  practical  manner  a  thousand 
miles  and  more  of  seacoast.  The  administration  at  Washing 
ton  set  to  work  diligently  to  buy  and  build ;  developed  shortly 
armor-clad  boats  and  steam  warships,  both  now  introduced 
in  naval  warfare  for  the  first  time,  and  almost  immediately 
11  Uncle  Sam's  webbed  feet,"  in  Lincoln's  odd  but  character 
istic  phrase,  were  leaving  their  marks  "wherever  the  land 
was  wet."  It  transpired  that  the  numerous  harbors  along 
the  Southern  coasts  were  of  no  particular  value,  for  only 
a  few  were  connected  by  railways  or  roads  with  the  interior, 
and  none  of  them,  outside  of  the  Chesapeake  region,  were 
at  the  beginning  of  the  War  connected  with  the  district  where 
supplies  were  needed.  In  fact,  the  magnificent  rivers  had 
given  each  little  district,  each  plantation,  as  it  were,  its 
own  special  waterway  to  the  oceanic  trade,  and  an  elaborate 
network  of  roads  and  railroads  had  not  been  needed  to  ensure 
rapid  economic  growth.  There  was  no  system  of  intercom 
munication  by  land  throughout  the  South  which  would  have 
made  one  harbor  as  good  a  base  of  communication  with 
Europe  as  another  and  therefore  have  rendered  effective 
blockade  of  so  many  harbors  as  impossible  as  it  first  seemed. 
In  reality,  the  investiture  of  a  very  few  places  closed  the 
only  ports  through  which  any  considerable  volume  of  trade 
had  flowed  or  which  possessed  any  connection  by  rail  with 
the  interior.  Even  had  the  ports  remained  open,  the  de 
ficiencies  of  transportation  would  still  have  sown  formidable 
obstacles  in  the  way  of  the  speedy  and  regular  transmission 
of  supplies.  The  waterways  were  indeed  a  detriment  to  the 


WHY  THE  NORTH  WON  323 

South,  were  simply  so  many  roads  to  the  interior  which 
Federal  gunboats  and  transports  were  speedily  utilizing  to 
land  troops  in  the  very  heart  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  and 
to  take  possession  of  the  seacoast  and  the  river-bottoms 
for  many  miles  inland.  In  fact,  the  only  system  of  trans 
portation,  which  the  South  had  consistently  used  between 
plantations  or  with  the  outside  world,  fell  into  the  hands 
of  her  enemies.  The  normal  intercourse  with  Europe  ceased 
even  before  hostilities  were  begun  in  earnest;  by  the  summer 
of  1861  the  South  was  already  finding  it  difficult  to  procure 
lead,  medicines,  salt,  and  other  necessities.9 

Nor  did  the  cotton  famine  attain  anything  like  the  pro 
portions  or  have  anything  like  the  effect  expected.  The  high 
price  and  ready  market  encouraged  exports  of  Egyptian  cot 
ton;  the  progress  of  the  Northern  armies  in  Tennessee  and 
Mississippi,  the  success  of  the  navy  along  the  Gulf  coast, 
enabled  the  Federal  government  to  seize  and  confiscate  con 
siderable  amounts  of  cotton,  all  of  which  was,  of  course, 
instantly  distributed  to  the  hungry  looms  in  New  England 
and  Lancashire.10  Both  governments  also  connived  at  the 
smuggling  of  cotton  through  the  lines,11  and  Davis  and  some 
of  his  cabinet  were  supposed  to  have  agreed  upon  a  scheme 
for  exchanging  the  idle  cotton  bales  with  the  Northerners 
for  necessities.12  This  expedient  was  viewed  with  little  favor : 

»  Rebellion  Records,  Series  IV,  Vol.  I,  276. 

10  "It   has   been  estimated  that  after   Sept.    1863,    England   received 
indirectly   from   the   Confederacy   an   average   of  4000   bales   a  week." 
"The  'leak'  was  not  a  trickling  stream,  but  a  river,  and  the  'famine' 
policy  was  a  dream."     Pendleton's  Stephens,  305. 

11  C.  A.  Dana's  Recollections  are  full  of  details  about  the  system  of 
licensing  trade  through  the  lines.     He  was  a   government  spy  in  the 
western  armies  to  investigate  conditions  and  watch  the  generals.     His 
confidential  letters  to  Stanton  are  full  of  the  most  valuable  information. 

12  Jones,  a  confidential  war  clerk  in  the  War  Department  at  Rich 
mond,  handled  the  Secretary's  private  correspondence,  including  letters 
from  the  Secretary  and  even  from  the  President.     With  the  consent  of 
the  authorities,  he  kept  a  diary  in  which  he  recorded  his  impressions 
of  men  and  measures.     A   Rebel   War  Clerk's   Diary,  I,    180    (Phila., 
1866),   and   following,   contains   a  good   deal  of   information  and   con 
jecture  about  cotton  speculation. 


324  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

the  North  desired  to  exhaust  the  Southern  supplies  as  soon 
as  possible ;  the  South  still  believed  that  a  real  cotton  famine 
would  be  a  great  weapon  in  its  favor  and  that  the  expected 
results  had  not  been  obtained  because  there  was  really  no 
famine.  Blockade-runners  plied  a  brisk  trade  and  brought 
invaluable  cargoes  of  salt,  medicine,  cartridges,  and  the  like ; 
but  the  vigilance  of  the  Federal  navy  prevented  any  depend 
ence  on  them  as  a  regular  source  of  supply.  On  the  whole,  it 
is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  blockade  was  so  soon 
effective  that  the  South  was  compelled  to  fight  the  War  from 
her  own  resources,  plus  the  very  considerable  supplies  of 
all  kinds  on  hand  in  May  1861. 

Her  inability  to  utilize  these  resources  was  another  cause  of 
the  Northern  victory.  When,  in  the  first  bitterness  of  de 
feat,  the  Southerners  sought  some  explanation  of  it,  many 
concluded  that  Davis,  his  personality,  his  incapacity,  the 
inefficiency  of  his  appointees,  his  stubborn  refusal  to  remove 
them  were  among  the  leading  causes  of  disaster.13  Men 
like  Pollard  fiercely  denied  that  the  South  was  exhausted  in 
men  or  means ; 14r  the  administration  had  simply  proved  itself 
utterly  incapable  of  utilizing  and  developing  such  resources 
as  it  possessed.  Few  will  now  deny  that  the  difficulties  were 
too  fundamental  to  have  been  overcome  by  human  ability, 
yet  had  Davis  and  his  administration  shown  anything  like 
the  consummate  skill  with  which  Lee  utilized  the  meager  re 
sources  at  his  disposal,  the  War  might  have  been  prolonged. 
But  the  result  could  hardly  have  been  changed.  Neither 

is  On  Oct.  31,  1862,  when  he  had  had  considerable  time  for  observa 
tion,  Jones  asked  himself  whether  Davis  could  ever  become  a  second 
Washington.  "I  know  not,  of  course;  but  I  know  what  quite  a  number 
here  say  of  him  now.  They  say  he  is  a  small  specimen  of  a  statesman 
and  no  military  chieftain  at  all.  And  worse  still  that  he  is  a  capricious 
tyrant."  Diary  I,  178.  Stephens  declared  in  January  1864,  after  his 
bitter  quarrel  with  Davis  had  had  time  to  cool,  "Those  at  the  head  of 
our  affairs"  seem  to  have  had  no  policy,  but  to  have  trusted  "to  the 
sublimity  of  luck  and  floating  upon  the  surface  of  the  occasion."  Pen- 
dleton,  Stephens,  311. 

i*  Pollard,  Life  of  Davis,  445-447.  The  whole  volume  is  merely  a 
detailed  elaboration  of  this  charge. 


WHY  THE  NORTH  WON  325 

logic  nor  skill  could  create  something  out  of  nothing,  and  the 
moment  the  gates  to  Europe  were  shut,  it  was  clear  that  the 
resources  of  the  South  were  hopelessly  inadequate  and  that 
during  a  conflict  of  such  magnitude  with  a  foe  so  abundantly 
provided  with  every  necessity,  no  foresight  could  develop  in 
time  a  sufficiently  diversified  industry  to  produce  what  was 
needed.15  Great  efforts  were  made;  more  was  accomplished 
than  seemed  in  any  way  possible  to  the  discouraged  men 
when  they  first  learned  that  the  blockade  would  soon  be 
effective ;  the  straw  was  lacking  and  the  bricks  could  not  be 
made. 

^  By  the  summer  of  1861,  the  supply  of  volunteers  in  the 
South  was  exhausted.  Conscription  was  begun  and  was  per 
force  continued  throughout  the  war  in  the  face  of  a  con 
stantly  increasing  opposition.  Careful  search  failed  to  un 
cover  more  than  scanty  supplies  of  nitre,  salt,  and  saltpetre. 
There  was  not  enough  crude  iron  to  keep  at  work  the  few 
foundries  which  the  government  did  create,  and  very  soon 
rails  and  old  iron  of  all  varieties  had  to  be  utilized.  Cloth 
became  scarce.  All  material  for  buttons  gave  out,  and  one 
prominent  lady  appeared  at  a  Richmond  ball  in  1864  in  a 
coarse  homespun  dress  with  buttons  of  gourd  seeds.  Paper 
and  ink  became  particularly  difficult  to  obtain,  and  the  execu 
tive  correspondence  was  in  the  later  years  written  on  old 
envelopes  split  open.  Wood  grew  so  scarce  in  Richmond 
that  it  was  treasured  and  hoarded  like  gold. 

Nothing  was  more  serious  than  the  effect  upon  transpor 
tation  of  the  lack  of  iron,  of  machinery,  and  of  skilled 
mechanics.  The  few  trunk  lines  of  the  South  had  not  been 
equipped  to  carry  the  commerce  of  the  country:  cotton  had 
been  shipped  by  water  or  by  short  spur-lines  of  narrow- 
gauge,  single-track  railroads  to  the  nearest  port.  The  rolling 
stock  of  the  trunk  lines  was  therefore  too  small  and  the  rails 
were  too  light  to  bear  the  severe  strain  at  once  imposed  upon 

IB  The  story  of  this  struggle  with  economic  difficulties  is  conveniently 
summarized  with  adequate  citations  in  Schwab's  The  Confederate  States 
of  America. 


326  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

them  by  the  War  Department.  Locomotives  broke  down ;  parts 
of  the  equipment  wore  out  and  could  not  be  replaced  because 
either  the  material  for  duplicating  the  damaged  parts  was 
lacking  or  no  man  understood  how  to  turn  them  out.  Hence 
such  supplies  as  there  were  could  not  be  promptly  and 
efficiently  distributed.  Often  the  food  collected  by  govern 
ment  agents  spoiled  before  it  could  be  moved ;  leather,  desper 
ately  needed  in  Virginia,  had  been  collected  in  North  Caro 
lina  but  could  not  be  shipped.16  This  deficiency  of  transpor 
tation  facilities  was  one  of  the  greatest  difficulties  with  which 
the  Confederate  government  had  to  cope.  It  was  due  in  the 
last  analysis  to  cotton  and  to  slavery,  to  the  policy  which 
had  kept  the  South  purely  an  agricultural  country  and  which 
had  regarded  the  development  of  diversified  industry  as  need 
less.  This  was  not  the  fault  of  any  individual,  but  of  the 
very  system  which  the  Confederacy  was  created  to  defend, 
and  which  thus,  by  a  curious  poetic  justice,  demonstrated  its 
unfitness  to  survive. 

There  was,  however,  at  many  periods  during  the  war,  strong 
feeling  among  Southerners,  which  later  research  has  on  the 
whole  justified,  that  the  men  in  control  did  not  make  the 
most  of  the  facilities  and  supplies  at  their  disposal.17  It  is 
of  course  easy  to  criticize,  and  difficult  to  make  sufficient  al 
lowance  for  the  fact  that  the  North  enjoyed  the  use  of  the 
administrative  machinery  developed  by  the  past  seventy  years 

is  Jones,  Diary,  I,  196. 

17  On  such  matters  as  this,  Jones  is  an  admirable  witness,  for  he  was 
purely  an  observer  and  had  ample  opportunities  to  learn  the  truth. 
The  government  has  50,000  pounds  of  leather  in  North  Carolina,  he 
writes.  "This  convinces  me  that  there  is  abundance  of  leather  in  the 
South,  if  it  were  properly  distributed.  It  is  held,  like  everything  else, 
by  speculators,  for  extortioners'  profits.  The  government  might  remedy 
the  evils,  and  remove  the  distresses  of  the  people;  but  instead  of  doing 
so,  the  bureaus  aggravate  them  by  capricious  seizures  and  tyrannical 
restrictions  on  transportation.  Letters  are  coming  in  from  every 
quarter  complaining  of  the  despotic  acts  of  government  agents."  Diary, 
I,  196.  "From  all  sections  of  the  Confederacy,  complaints  are  coming 
in  that  the  military  agents  of  the  bureaus  are  oppressing  the  people 
and  the  belief  is  expressed  by  many  that  a  sentiment  is  prevailing 
inimical  to  the  government  itself."  Nov.  29,  1862.  Ibid.,  p.  199. 


WHY  THE  NORTH  WON  327 

and  that  the  South  was  compelled  to  create  a  new  adminis 
tration  and  had  perforce  to  fill  many  offices  with  men  scarcely 
competent  because  no  better  were  available.  But  this  will 
not  explain  why  Davis  and  his  Cabinet  so  soon  fell  to  log 
gerheads;  why  Stephens  and  many  other  ante-bellum  leaders 
went  into  implacable  and  at  times  violent  opposition;  and 
why  the  impression  became  general  that  Davis  was  appoint 
ing  favorites  and  not  the  best  men  available.18  Jones,  a 
highly  confidential  clerk  in  Richmond,  who  knew  nearly  all 
the  secrets,  wrote  in  his  diary  of  his  surprise  to  find  the  men 
who  had  done  the  most  to  create  the  War  offered  clerkships 
with  hesitancy  and  relegated  to  "the  lowest  subordinate 
positions,  while  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry,  never  heard  of  before, 
young  and  capable  of  performing  military  service,  rich  and 
able  to  live  without  office,  are  heads  of  bureaus,  chief  clerks 
of  departments,  and  staff  officers  flourishing  their  stars."19 
Davis  insisted  upon  retaining  as  generals  Pemberton  and 
Bragg,  in  whom  many  placed  no  confidence  at  all  after  their 
disasters  of  1862  and  1863,  and  persistently  refused  to  ad 
vance  to  commands  of  importance  Beauregard,  in  whom  the 
people  had  implicit  faith. 

The  clearest  case  seems  to  be  nearly  if  not  quite  the  most 
important.  It  involves  the  Commissary  General,  Northrup. 

"How  does  this  speak  for  the  government;  or  rather  the  efficiency  of 
the  men  who  by  'many  indirect  ways'  came  into  power?  Alas!  it  is  a 
sad  commentary."  Ibid.,  p.  204.  "An  expose"  of  funds  in  the  hands 
of  disbursing  agents  shows  that  there  are  nearly  70  millions  of  dollars 
not  accounted  for."  Ibid.,  182. 

is "  The  Examiner  to-day  [July  1863]  in  praising  him  [Yancey] 
made  a  bitter  assault  on  the  President,  saying  he  was  unfortunately 
and  hastily  inflicted  on  the  Confederacy  at  Montgomery,  and  when  fixed 
in  position,  banished  from  his  presence  the  heart  and  brain  of  the 
South — denying  all  participation  in  the  affairs  of  the  government  to 
the  great  men  who  were  the  authors  of  secession,  etc."  Ibid.,  I, 
391. 

is  Diary,  I,  205,  216.  De  Bow  and  Fitzhugh  were  offered  clerkships 
with  hesitation.  Might  not  De  Bow's  intimate  knowledge  of  Southern 
conditions  and  familiarity  with  financial  and  commercial  questions 
have  been  of  value  to  the  Treasury  Department  where  the  Secretary 
seems  to  have  had  few  to  advise  him  competently? 


328  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Upon  him  fell  the  burden  and  responsibility  of  utilizing  care 
fully  the  scanty  supplies,  and  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say 
that  by  1863  he  retained  the  confidence  only  of  Davis  him 
self,  and  was  cordially  hated  by  the  people  at  large.20  At 
a  time  when  shirts  were  selling  for  $12,  Northrup  issued  an 
order  offering  to  buy  shirts  for  the  army  at  $1,  an  offer 
widely  commented  upon  as  displaying  something  less  than 
average  perception,  to  say  nothing  of  common  sense.  He 
offered  to  carry  clothing  from  the  families  and  friends  of 
the  soldiers  to  the  men  in  the  trenches,  when,  as  Jones  re 
marked,  "the  people  will  not  trust  him  to  convey  the  cloth 
ing  to  their  sons  and  brothers,  and  so  the  army  must  suffer 
on. ' ' 21  This  was  in  1862.  Lee  repeatedly  complained  of 
the  inefficiency  of  Northrup 's  work  and  more  than  once 
categorically  requested  his  dismissal;  but  Davis  declined  to 
remove  him.  It  seems  scarcely  possible  to  justify  the  orders 
forbidding  the  feeding  of  regiments  on  the  produce  of  the 
district  in  which  they  were  located  and  compelling  them  to 
depend  upon  irregular  shipments  of  the  regulation  bacon  and 
corn.  Ugly  charges,  which  received  wide  credit,  were  made 
of  speculations  in  food  and  cotton  by  individuals  and  even 
by  the  commissary  department,22  of  the  use  of  the  railroads 
for  transportation  of  private  shipments  of  grain  for  specu- 

20  Elaborate  discussions  of  Northrup's  case  will  be  found  in  all  the 
lives  of  Davis,  in  such  books  as  Pollard's  Lost  Cause,  and  in  the  corre 
spondence  of  the  chief  military  men,  especially  cogent  material  being 
found  in  the  letters  of  Lee. 

21  Jones,   Diary,   I,   198,   Nov.   29,    1862.     "The    Commissary   General 
to-day  says  there  is  not  wheat  enough  in  Virginia    (when  a  good  crop 
was  raised)   for  Gen.  Lee's  army,  and,  unless  he  has  millions  in  money 
and  cotton,  the  army  must  disband  for  want  of  food.     I  don't  believe 
it."    Ibid.,  p.  183. 

22  "God  speed  the  day  of  peace,"  wrote  Jones  in  1862.     "Our  patriot 
ism  is  mainly  in  the  army  and  among  the  ladies  of  the  South.     The 
avarice   and  cupidity  of  the  men  at  home  could  only  be  excelled  by 
ravenous    wolves;    and    most    of    our    sufferings    are    fully    deserved." 
Diary,  I,  200.     "We  are  already  meager  and  emaciated.     Yet  I  believe 
there  is  abundance  of  clothing  and  food,  held  by  the  extortioners.     The 
government   should  wage  war   upon  the   speculators — enemies   as    mis 
chievous   as    the   Yankees."    Ibid.,   II,   280.     Sept.,    1864.     For    cotton 
speculations  see  Ibid.,  I,  180-2;  187  et  seq. 


WHY  THE  NORTH  WON  329 

lative  ends,23  of  the  "loan"  of  army  mules  and  horses  for 
months  to  wealthy  gentlemen  at  a  time  when  the  army  was 
in  desperate  need  and  Northrup  was  complaining  of  a  scar 
city  of  transport  animals; 24  of  illegal  exemptions  from  taxes 
and  food  levies  of  the  friends  and  relatives  of  Northrup. 
After  all  allowances  have  been  made,  there  seems  to  have 
been  in  the  commissary  department  much  corruption  and 
inefficiency,  whose  immediate  effect  on  the  result  of  the  War 
was  only  too  apparent  and  for  which  Davis  in  person  must 
largely  be  held  responsible. 

The  finances  of  the  Confederacy  seem  also  to  have  been 
mismanaged.  The  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  Meminger,  was 
honest  and  well-intentioned,  but  totally  unacquainted  with 
finance.  He  had,  indeed,  a  fundamental  difficulty  to  struggle 
with  which  no  skill  could  have  surmounted — the  lack  of  suf 
ficient  specie  in  the  country  to  serve  as  an  adequate  medium 
of  exchange  for  domestic  and  foreign  business.  There  seem 
to  have  been  about  fifteen  millions  in  specie  in  the  South 

zs  Jones,  Diary,  I,  182  et  seq.  "I  believe  the  commissaries  and  quar 
termasters  are  cheating  the  government."  "A  gentleman  in  Alabama 
writes  that  his  [Northrup's]  agents  are  speculating  in  food."  Ibid.,  198. 

24.  "Our  cause  is  in  danger  of  being  lost  for  want  of  horses  and  mules, 
and  yet  I  discovered  to-day  that  the  government  [i.  e.,  Northrup]  has 
been  lending  horses  to  men  who  have  but  recently  suffered  some  of  the 
calamities  of  war.  I  discovered  it  in  a  letter  from  Hon.  R.  M.  T. 
Hunter  of  Essex  County,  asking  in  behalf  of  himself  and  neighbors  to 
be  permitted  to  retain  the  borrowed  horses  beyond  the  time  specified, 
October  1.  Mr.  Hunter  borrowed  two  horses  and  four  mules.  He  is 
worth  millions  and  only  suffered  his  first  loss  by  the  enemy  a  few 
weeks  ago!"  Sept.,  1864.  Ibid.,  II,  279.  A  few  days  later  he  wrote: 
"Over  100,000  landed  proprietors  and  most  of  the  slave-owners  are 
now  out  of  the  ranks,  and  soon,  I  fear,  we  shall  have  an  army  that  will 
not  fight,  having  nothing  to  fight  for.  And  this  is  the  result  of  the 
pernicious  policy  of  partiality  and  exclusiveness,  disintegrating  society 
in  such  a  crisis,  and  recognizing  distinction  of  ranks,  the  higher  class 
staying  home  and  making  money,  the  lower  class  thrust  into  the 
trenches."  Of  course,  the  opinion  of  one  man,  however  well  informed, 
is  hardly  conclusive  evidence  in  so  important  a  matter  as  this,  but  a 
man  in  Jones's  position  of  trust  would  scarcely  believe  such  things 
about  his  immediate  superiors  unless  something  was  wrong.  If  his 
testimony  is  worth  anything  on  any  subject,  it  certainly  should  be  im 
portant  on  this. 


330  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

at  the  outbreak  of  the  War,  which,  carefully  husbanded, 
would  have  served  as  the  stable  basis  of  issues  of  treasury 
notes  or  national  bank  notes,  large  enough  for  the  needs  of 
ordinary  business.  That  the  specie  could  not  be  replaced  if 
exported ;  that  the  country  would  have  no  basis  for  a  medium 
of  exchange  if  it  disappeared;  that  it  was  enough  to  support 
business  at  home  but  utterly  inadequate  to  meet  any  of  the 
needs  of  the  War  at  home  or  abroad,  seems  never  to  have 
dawned  on  any  one  at  Richmond.  Hamilton  had  financed 
the  United  States  with  only  two  millions  in  specie,  but  this 
they  either  never  knew  or  had  totally  forgotten.  However 
that  may  have  been,  the  specie  in  the  South  was  with  in 
credible  difficulty  collected  by  the  government  in  the  form 
of  a  loan,  and  with  still  more  unbelievable  stupidity  was 
shipped  to  Europe  to  pay  for  supplies.25  Then,  notwith 
standing  the  numerous  examples  offered  by  history  of  the 
futility  of  using  unlimited  paper  money  as  a  medium  of 
exchange,  the  government  began  in  1861  a  series  of  treasury 
note  issues,  and,  whenever  one  issue  was  exhausted,  printed 
more.  The  inefficiency  of  the  administration  is  clear  from 
the  fact  that  within  a  couple  of  years  the  Secretary  himself 
is  believed  not  to  have  known  how  many  notes  had  been  issued 
or  what  the  actual  indebtedness  of  the  government  was.26 

Taxes  paid  in  money  speedily  became  a  farce;  the  people 
paid  back  to  the  government  its  own  worthless  paper.  There 
was  at  the  South  no  commercial  fabric,  no  credit  structure  on 
which  the  government  and  the  community  might  rely  in  the 
crisis.  The  government  was  promptly  reduced  to  taxes  in 
kind,  the  collection  of  grain,  leather,  and  the  like  from  the 
producer,  and  upon  it  was  instantly  forced  the  thousand 
and  one  burdens  of  transportation  and  manufacture  which 
the  Northern  Government  was  able  to  turn  over  to  private 
enterprise  with  admirable  results.  The  Confederate  ad- 

25  The  financial  history  of  the  Confederacy,  bonds,  notes,  and  taxa 
tion,  has  been  treated  in  detail  by  Schwab,  in  his  Confederate  States 
of  America. 

26  Eggleston,  Rebel  Recollections,  79. 


WHY  THE  NORTH  WON  331 

minstration,  weak  at  best,  compelled  for  the  most  part  to 
work  through  inexperienced  hands,  had  thrust  upon  it  the 
almost  insuperable  task  of  utilizing  the  crude  products  of 
an  agricultural  community  and  of  making  them  somehow  or 
other  meet  the  complex  necessities  of  a  civilized  State  at  war. 
The  failure  of  such  an  administration  adequately  to  solve 
such  a  problem  could  be  at  best  scarcely  more  than  a  ques 
tion  of  time. 

Out  of  such  a  situation  grew  inevitably  centralized  govern 
ment,  acts  which  seemed  arbitrary  to  the  people,  infringe 
ments  upon  the  liberty  of  States  and  of  individuals.  As  at 
the  North,  the  exigencies  of  the  case  forced  the  government 
to  act  and  not  pause  very  long  over  constitutional  subtleties. 
Strangely  enough,  this  very  sort  of  centralized  administra 
tion,  this  very  readiness  to  override  individual  and  State 
opinion  in  the  name  of  expediency  and  of  the  general  wel 
fare,  had  been  one  of  the  causes  alleged  by  the  South  for 
secession,  and  these  very  things  the  new  constitution  had 
been  framed  to  prevent.  South  Carolina  had  inveighed 
against  the  tariff,27  and  the  new  Constitution  had  forbidden 
customs  duties  and  declared  for  free  trade;  yet  the  Con 
federacy  almost  at  once  instituted  a  tariff  of  the  most  onerous 
and  harassing  type,  a  duty  on  exports  which  would  have 
been  extremely  burdensome  had  there  been  any  opportunity 
to  collect  it.28  Worse  than  all  others  were  the  constant  and 
obvious  violations  of  State  sovereignty  and  of  individual 
liberty.  In  the  fall  of  1862,  when  only  Virginia,  the  Caro- 
linas,  Georgia,  and  Alabama  remained  entire  in  the  hands  of 
the  Confederates,  Georgia  and  North  Carolina  were  roused 
almost  to  the  point  of  rebellion  by  their  anger  at  what  they 
deemed  the  disregard  of  the  doctrine  of  States'  sovereignty,29 

27  Her  Ordinance  of  Secession  declared  the  tariff  one  of  her  chief 
grievances. 

23  To  ensure  the  payment  of  interest  and  principal  on  the  $15,000,00( 
bond  issue  authorized  Feb.  28,  1861,  an  export  duty  of  one-eighth  of  a 
cent  a  pound  was  levied  on  all  cotton  exported,  and  was  to  be  paid  in 
specie  or  in  the  coupons  of  the  bonds. 

2»  Governor  Brown  of  Georgia  wrote  to  Davis  that  "no  act  of  the 


332  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

and  the  Charleston  Courier  called  loudly  for  a  convention 
to  depose  or  impeach  the  President.30  Many  prominent  men 
considered  it  better  to  yield  to  the  North  and  restore  the 
Union  than  to  live  under  such  a  Confederacy.31  After  An- 
tietam,  when  Lee's  regiments  were  melting  away  by  desertion, 
Governor  Brown  of  Georgia  put  every  possible  obstacle  in 
the  way  of  conscription  in  that  State,  and  at  the  fall  elec 
tion,  Vance,  an  open  and  avowed  opponent  of  Davis 's,  was 
elected  Governor  in  North  Carolina  by  a  majority  of  forty 
thousand.32  To  connect  Richmond  and  the  field  of  war  with 
Charleston  and  Atlanta  after  the  investiture  of  Chattanooga 
had  closed  the  only  trunk  line,  it  became  necessary  to  join 
together  various  short  lines  and  build  about  forty  miles  of 
road  from  Danville,  Va.,  to  Greensboro,  N.  C.  The  latter 
State  declined  to  permit  the  Confederate  government  to  build 
it,  and  the  road,  a  military  necessity  of  the  very  first  con 
sequence,  was  built  only  when  the  war  power  was  exercised 
to  override  the  prohibition  of  the  State.33  In  1864,  Gov 
ernor  Brown  of  Georgia  flatly  refused  in  an  abusive  and  of 
fensive  letter,  written  at  a  crucial  moment,  to  send  the 
militia  of  the  State  into  the  ranks  in  Virginia.34  "  Gloom 

government  of  the  United  States  prior  to  the  secession  of  Georgia  had 
struck  a  blow  at  constitutional  liberty  so  fell  as  has  been  stricken  [sic] 
by  the  conscript  acts.  .  .  .  The  people  of  Georgia  will  refuse  to  yield 
their  sovereignty  to  usurpation."    Dodd's  Davis,  300. 
so  Issue  of  May  22,  1862. 

31  Stephens,   the   Vice-President,   wrote   in   August    1862,    "Better    in 
my  judgment  that  Richmond  s'hould  fall  and  that  the  enemy's  armies 
should  sweep  our  whole  country  from  the  Potomac  to  the  Gulf  than 
that  our   people   should   submissively  yield   obedience  to  one  of  these 
edicts  of  our  own  generals."     Pendleton's  Stephens,  292. 

32  Dodd's  Davis,  283.     Mr.  Dodd,  a  Southern  man,  has  temperately 
dealt  with  the  very  large  amount  of  material  on  the  infringements  of 
States'  sovereignty  without  denying  their  existence  or  importance  and 
yet  without  drawing  conclusions  of  too  sweeping  a  character. 

33  Dodd's  Davis,  259-60. 

3*  "A  long  letter  was  received  at  the  [war]  department  to-day  from 
Governor  Brown  absolutely  refusing  to  respond  to  the  President's  call 
for  the  militia  of  that  State.  He  says  he  will  not  encourage  the  Presi 
dent's  ambitious  projects  by  placing  in  his  hands,  and  under  his  un 
conditional  control  all  that  remains  to  preserve  the  reserved  rights 


WHY  THE  NORTH  WON  333 

and  despondency  rule  the  hour,"  wrote  Cobb  from  Georgia, 
and  bitter  opposition  to  the  administration  mingled  with 
disaffection  and  disloyalty  is  manifesting  itself. "  85  In  fact, 
the  Confederate  government,  like  the  Northern,  found  itself 
hampered  continually  by  a  bitter  and  active  opposition  among 
its  own  citizens,  which  not  infrequently  was  carried  to  the 
point  of  flat  refusal  to  act  at  critical  moments  although  the 
prompt  cooperation  of  all  was  needed  to  render  the  contest 
effectual.  ' '  The  cause  was  lost  by  our  own  dissensions, ' '  wrote 
a  member  of  the  Cabinet  in  later  years. 

The  length  of  the  War  was  due  to  a  variety  of  reasons,  but 
first  and  foremost  to  the  military  skill  and  personal  mag 
netism  of  General  Robert  E.  Lee  and  the  able  assistance  he 
received  from  such  men  as  Jackson  and  Johnston.  Indeed, 
the  consummate  skill  with  which  Lee  fought  a  losing  contest 
for  years  has  scarcely  if  ever  been  surpassed.  Certainly  no 
general  of  equal  skill  was  enrolled  in  the  Northern  armies; 
Grant's  reputation  was  due  to  his  success,  which  in  its  turn 
was  the  result  of  a  combination  of  many  factors,  among  which 
the  superior  resources  of  the  North  and  other  influences  just 
enumerated  ought  to  have  prominence.  Much  allowance  must 
also  be  made  for  the  fact  that  the  South  stood  on  the  defensive 
and  that  to  conquer  her  required  the  subjugation  of  an  enor- 

of  his  State.  He  bitterly  and  offensively  criticizes  the  President's 
management  of  military  affairs."  Jones,  Diary,  II,  292-3.  Sept.  26, 
1864. 

ss  Rebellion  Records,  Series  IV,  Vol.  Ill,  1010.  On  Feb.  3,  1864, 
Davis  sent  the  following  message  to  the  Confederate  Congress:  "Dis 
content,  disaffection,  and  disloyalty  are  manifested  among  those  who 
through  the  sacrifices  of  others,  have  enjoyed  quiet  and  safety  at  home. 
Public  meetings  have  been  held  in  some  of  which  a  treasonable  design 
is  masked  by  a  pretence  of  devotion  to  State  sovereignty,  and  in  others 
is  openly  avowed.  ...  In  certain  localities  men  of  no  mean  position 
do  not  hesitate  to  avow  their  disloyalty  and  hostility  to  our  cause,  and 
their  advocacy  of  peace  on  the  terms  of  submission  and  the  abolition 
of  slavery.  .  .  .  [Soldiers  are  taken  from  the  ranks  on  the  eve  of  battle 
by  means  of  writs  of  habeas  corpus.  If  this  continues]  Desertion, 
already  a  frightful  evil,  will  become  the  order  of  the  day.  And  who 
will  arrest  the  deserter,  when  most  of  those  at  home  are  engaged  with 
him  in  the  common  cause  of  setting  the  government  at  defiance?" 
Richardson,  Messages  and  Papers  of  the  Confederacy,  I,  396,  398. 


334  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

mous  theater  of  war,  which,  even  had  the  resistance  heen  less 
able  and  desperate,  would  have  required  time  for  adequate  oc 
cupation  of  the  numerous  strategic  points.  Furthermore,  it 
must  always  be  remembered  that  the  South  had  very  much 
the  advantage  in  equipment  in  1861,  that  the  North  required 
time  to  adjust  itself  to  the  situation,  and  was,  moreover, 
hampered  by  the  commercial  crisis  of  1861-2.  Time  was  neces 
sary  to  make  the  greater  resources  of  the  North  in  men  and 
munitions  of  war  tell  decisively  upon  the  outcome.  Indeed, 
the  very  abundance  of  the  Northern  provision  for  the  army 
was  for  a  while  an  administrative  problem  of  the  first  magni 
tude.  There  was  too  much  food  and  clothing  to  be  promptly 
and  accurately  distributed  by  the  old  machinery,  and  the 
creation  of  a  new  administration,  undertaken  by  Stanton  with 
admirable  determination  and  energy  and  executed  with  con 
summate  skill,  required  time  to  become  effective. 

Besides,  politics  at  the  North  was  constantly  tying  the  hands 
of  the  generals  and  robbing  them  of  discretion,  and  the  ac 
tivity  of  the  opposition  during  the  year  1862  made  it  long 
doubtful  whether  the  conflict  would  not  eome  to  an  end  be 
cause  of  the  refusal  of  the  Northern  people  to  countenance  it 
longer.  Lincoln  found  it  difficult  during  the  first  two  years  to 
leave  the  conduct  of  the  campaign  in  the  hands  of  the  men  at 
the  front.  His  idea  that  Washington  needed  fifty  thousand 
men  either  within  it  or  close  at  hand  to  insure  its  safety  often 
prevented  the  undertaking  or  completion  of  any  plan  which 
depended  for  success  upon  the  concentration  of  the  Union 
forces,  and  the  Confederates  soon  discovered  that  a  feint  at 
Washington  invariably  paralyzed  the  Union  armies,  because 
of  the  dispatch  of  so  large  a  detachment  to  protect  the  city. 
Lincoln  saw  more  clearly  than  the  men  in  the  field  that  the 
real  object  of  the  War  was  not  so  much  to  win  battles  as  to 
crush  the  Confederacy,  and  that  there  were  enemies  at  home 
almost  as  difficult  to  meet  and  whose  defeat  was  even  more 
imperative  than  that  of  Lee.  From  the  first,  there  was  a 
strong  minority  at  the  North  opposed  to  the  War,  some  be 
cause  of  a  belief  in  the  illegality  of  coercion  or  in  the  right  to 


WHY  THE  NORTH  WON  335 

secede,  the  vast  majority  because  they  believed  the  conduct  of 
the  war  reprehensible.  The  administrative  corruption  and 
confusion  of  the  first  year,  the  defeat  at  Bull  Run,  the  long 
inactivity  of  the  huge  force  of  men  at  the  front  while  Mc- 
Clellan  was  turning  that  " armed  mob"  into  an  army  was 
interpreted  at  the  North  very  much  to  the  detriment  of  the 
government.  It  had  been  doubtful  in  1861  whether  the  North 
would  support  a  war  at  all;  it  continued  to  be  doubtful  as  in 
activity  and  bungling  were  succeeded  by  the  reverses  of  18G2 
whether  the  North  would  not  make  imperative  the  conclusion 
of  an  ignoble  peace  by  the  withdrawal  of  troops  and  supplies. 
Denunciations  of  Lincoln  and  of  his  generals  were  delivered 
by  notable  men  in  Washington  and  even  in  the  anterooms 
of  the  Executive  Mansion.30  In  September  1862,  men  said 
openly  in  Pennsylvania  that  they  would  be  glad  to  hang  Lin 
coln  to  the  nearest  lamp-post.37  Men,  waiting  to  see  the  Presi 
dent,  maligned  and  abused  him  openly  and  went  to  lengths 
which  were  amazing.38  A  Democratic  paper,  the  New  York 
World,  declared  on  June  9,  1864,  after  Lincoln  had  been  re- 
nominated:  "The  age  of  statesmen  is  gone:  the  age  of  rail- 
splitters  and  tailors,  of  buffoons,  boors,  and  fanatics,  has  suc 
ceeded.  ...  In  a  crisis  of  the  most  appalling  magnitude,  re 
quiring  statesmanship  of  the  highest  order,  the  country  is 
asked  to  consider  the  claims  of  two  ignorant,  boorish,  third- 
rate  backwoods  lawyers  for  the  highest  stations  in  the  govern- 

se  Nearly  all  the  books  dealing  with  life  in  Washington  during  the 
War  or  with  Lincoln  as  President  will  furnish  numerous  examples. 
Oberholtzer  in  his  Life  of  Lincoln  cites  several  characteristic  cases. 

37  Oberholtzer,  Lincoln,  237. 

38  So  Riddle  tells  in  his  Recollections,  267.     "The  one  most  loud  and 
bitter  was   Henry  Wilson  of  Massachusetts.     His   open  assaults   were 
amazing."     Lincoln  would  be  renominated,  said   Wilson,  and  "bad  as 
that  would  be,  the  best  must  be  made  of  it."     Chase,  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  and  later  Chief  Justice,  wrote  in  1864:     "Nothing  except  the 
waste  of  life  is  more  painful  in  this  war  than  the  absolutely  reckless 
waste  of  means.  .  .  .  Contrary  to  all  rules,  the  spigot  in  Uncle  Abe's 
barrel  is  made  twice  as  big  as  the  bung-hole.     He  may  have  been   a 
good  flat-boat  man  and  rail-splitter,  but  he  certainly  never  learned  the 
true  science  of  coopering."     Quoted  by  Rhodes,  History  of  the  United 
States,  IV,  477-8. 


336  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

ment."  The  Democratic  party  campaigned  the  North  in 
1862  and  1864  on  the  platform  that  the  conduct  of  the  War 
was  a  disgrace  and  demanded  its  prompt  conclusion  by  a  treaty 
with  the  South  upon  the  best  terms  obtainable. 

As  Lincoln  perceived,  the  defeat  of  the  administration  at 
the  polls  in  the  North  would  be  even  more  disastrous  than 
reverses  in  the  field;  and  reverses  in  the  field  were  the 
most  powerful  weapon  in  the  hands  of  his  political  adversaries 
at  home.  Despatches  poured  into  Washington  from  Northern 
governors  and  politicians:  "Nothing  but  success,  speedy  and 
decided,  will  save  our  cause  from  destruction.  In  the  North 
west,  distrust  and  despair  are  seizing  upon  the  hearts  of  the 
people. "  39  Such  was  the  refrain.  The  difficulties  of  the  situ 
ation  were  nothing  to  Halleck  and  Lincoln;  the  armies  must 
move  forward  at  all  costs,  for  inaction  produced  almost  as 
unfavorable  an  effect  on  Northern  opinion  as  did  defeat.  The 
generals  must  act  so  as  to  retain  the  confidence  of  the  people 
at  home ;  the  war  was  no  mere  military  event ;  it  was  a  political 
and  economic  cataclysm  of  the  utmost  complexity.  Its  ob 
ject  was  not  to  win  victories  but  to  destroy  the  Confederacy 
and  military  operations  must  be  sacrificed  to  the  exigencies 
of  political  campaigns,  even  if  it  became  necessary  to  re 
nounce  the  plans  which  seemed  from  a  military  point  of  view 
conclusive.  Food,  clothing,  transportation,  the  need  of  elabo 
rate  preparations  before  opening  the  campaign,  so  invariably 
insisted  upon  by  McClellan  and  other  generals,  made  Lincoln 
impatient  in  the  face  of  the  feats  accomplished  by  Lee  with 
out  such  resources  or  preparations.  The  President,  wrote 

3&  These  sentences  are  from  a  despatch  from  Governor  Morton  of 
Indiana  to  Lincoln,  dated  Oct.  21,  1862.  The  Governors  of  Ohio  and 
Illinois  telegraphed  at  the  same  time  in  similar  strain.  The  most  in 
structive  incident  from  this  point  of  view  was  the  removal  of  Buell 
and  the  appointment  of  Rosecrans,  solely  with  a  view  to  securing  an 
immediate  and  successful  advance.  Rosecrans  then  declined  to  advance 
until  his  preparations  were  complete  and  for  nearly  a  month  remained 
at  Nashville,  furiously  busy  but  apparently  inactive,  while  President, 
Congress,  and  the  Northern  press  raged  and  stormed.  To  all  orders 
and  demands  he  gave  but  one  answer,  his  resignation.  Rhodes  has  par 
ticularly  well  emphasized  such  issues  as  these  in  his  account  of  the  War. 


WHY  THE  NORTH  WON  337 

Halleck,  the  General-in-Chief,  to  Buell,  "does  not  understand 
vhy  we  cannot  march  as  the  enemy  marches,  live  as  he  lives, 
nd  fight  as  he  fights,  unless  we  admit  the  inferiority  of  our 
roops  and  generals. ' ' 40  But  the  generals,  campaigning  in  the 
Alleghanies,  knew  that  the  mountain  districts  were  at  heart 
Jnionist  and  that  the  surest  way  to  throw  them  into  the  ranks 
>f  the  enemy  would  be  to  forage  there  for  the  support  of  the 
"ederal  armies.41  The  strength  of  the  Unionist  party  at  the 
South  had  been  counted  upon  by  many  to  aid  as  powerfully 
n  the  eventual  reduction  of  the  Confederacy  as  campaigns 
ind  armies.  Besides,  the  desperate  expedients  to  which 
lecessity  drove  Lee  were  scarcely  measures  to  adopt  from 
choice  with  a  restless  and  suspicious  public  watching  for  mis- 
akes.  The  news  that  the  troops  were  ragged,  barefoot,  and 
mngry  because  of  an  impetuous  advance  into  a  district  where 
here  was  insufficient  forage  and  to  which  supplies  had  not 
)een  brought,  would  have  been  a  worse  blow  to  the  administra- 
ion  than  inaction  could  possibly  be.  In  December  1862,  the 
situation  was  darkest.  "Everything  goes  wrong,"  said  Lin 
coln  to  Seward  and  Weed.  "The  rebel  armies  hold  their  own ; 
Grant  is  wandering  around  in  Mississippi ;  Burnside  manages 
to  keep  ahead  of  Lee ;  Seymour  has  carried  New  York  and  if  his 
"the  Democratic]  party  carries  and  holds  many  of  the  North 
ern  States,  we  shall  have  to  give  up  the  fight,  for  we  can  never 
conquer  three-fourths  of  our  countrymen,  scattered  in  front, 
flank,  and  rear. ' ' 42 

*o  Rebellion  Records,  XVI,  Part  II,  627.  Lincoln  wrote  to  McClellan, 
Oct.  13,  1862:  "Are  you  not  over-cautious  when  you  assume  that  you 
cannot  do  what  the  enemy  is  constantly  doing?  .  .  .  Change  positions 
with  the  enemy,  and  think  you  not  he  would  break  your  communication 
with  Richmond  within  the  next  twenty-four  hours?  ...  We  should  not 
so  operate  as  merely  to  drive  him  away.  As  we  must  beat  him  some 
where  or  fail  finally,  we  can  do  it,  if  at  all,  easier  near  to  us  than  far 
away."  Ibid..  XIX,  Part  I,  13. 

4i  Halleck  telegraphed  to  Grant  after  the  battle  of  Corinth:  "Why 
not  pursue  tne  enemy  into  Mississippi,  supporting  your  army  on  the 
country?"  Grant  replied,  laconically,  "An  army  cannot  subsist  itself 
on  the  country  except  in  forage."  Rhodes,  History  of  the  United  States, 
IV,  181. 

2  Oberholtzer,  Lincoln,  242.     His  authority  is  not  cited. 


338  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Grant  was  more  successful  than  other  generals  not  so  much 
because  of  superior  military  ability  as  because  he  alone  fully 
grasped  the  relation  of  the  military  to  the  political  situation. 
To  retire  along  the  railroad  from  Corinth  and  luka  upon 
Memphis,  there  to  pause  to  recuperate  his  army,  to  prepare  a 
base  of  operations  from  which  the  following  spring  to  ad 
vance  down  the  river  upon  Vicksburg,  would  have  been  from 
a  military  point  of  view  much  better  than  an  immediate  ad 
vance  overland  on  Vicksburg  through  Mississippi  bayous  and 
swamps,  constantly  exposed  to  the  danger  of  losing  touch  with 
his  base  of  supplies.  But  headlines  in  the  Northern  papers, 
"Grant  Retreats  on  Memphis, "  would  have  been  at  that  junc 
ture  fatal  to  the  campaign  and  to  his  career  as  a  general,  and 
he  knew  it.  An  advance,  which  did  not  expose  him  to  actual 
defeat,  which  would  hearten  the  sinking  and  discouraged  and 
give  the  administration  papers  a  chance  to  print  the  scare- 
heads,  "Grant  Advancing/'  would  be  potent  material  with 
which  to  conjure  at  home.  Eventually,  the  victories  at  Gettys 
burg  and  Vicksburg  "knocked  the  planks  out  of  the  Chicago 
platform "  which  declared  the  conduct  of  the  "War  a  failure. 
Not  till  then  was  it  clear  that  the  North  would  support  the 
War  to  the  end. 

These  difficulties  were  intensified  by  the  wide  disapproval 
of  the  interference  with  the  right  of  free  speech  and  of  the 
press  and  of  the  arbitrary  arrests  made  by  virtue  of  the  ' '  war 
powers "  assumed  by  Lincoln.  It  was  thought  at  Washington 
inexpedient  to  allow  speeches  at  public  meetings  which  openly 
expressed  sympathy  for  the  South  or  declared  the  Federal 
government  a  despotism.  Several  men  arrested  for  such  ut 
terances  without  the  usual  legal  formalities  were  promptly 
elected  by  the  people  of  their  States  to  the  legislatures,  and  in 
one  case  even  to  the  United  States  Senate,  at  the  very  moment 
when  they  were  in  custody  charged  with  treason.  The  large 
bounties  offered  by  State  and  nation  to  volunteers  failed  to 
maintain  the  strength  of  the  Union  forces  and  the  North  was 
compelled  to  follow  the  expedients  adopted  months  before  at 
the  South  and  have  recourse  to  a  draft  to  recruit  the  armies. 


WHY  THE  NORTH  WON  339 

It  aroused  immediate  and  widespread  opposition  and  in  July 
1863,  caused  in  New  York  City  a  riot  which  assumed  the  pro 
portions  of  a  revolt  against  the  government,  held  control  of 
the  city  for  three  days,  and  was  finally  only  reduced  by  troops 
hastily  sent  back  from  the  front  to  cooperate  with  the  navy. 
The  amazing  commercial  prosperity  at  the  North,  which  be 
came  evident  in  1863,  and  was  due  to  fundamental  causes 
over  which  no  one  had  control,  greatly  affected  the  attitude 
of  the  majority  in  favor  of  the  administration  and  prevented 
anything  more  than  sporadic  and  temporary  opposition.  The 
number  of  exemptions,  the  permission  to  pay  substitutes,  and 
the  comparative  ease  of  desertion  also  helped.43  With  this 
political  opposition,  Lincoln  dealt  with  conspicuous  success. 
The  support  of  the  government  by  a  majority  at  the  North 
was  due  more  considerably  than  most  men  have  realized  to 
the  personal  character,  influence,  and  tact  of  Abraham  Lin 
coln,  who  in  this  sense  was  one  of  the  important  factors  in  the 
winning  of  the  War  by  the  North. 

«  The  Draft  of  July  18,  1864,  for  500,000  men  resulted  in  the  draw 
ing  of  231,918  names,  of  whom  138,536  reported;  82,531  were  ex 
empted  outright;  and  the  total  draft  amounted  to  56,005,  of  whom 
more  than  half  provided  substitutes.  In  New  York  the  accumulated 
county,  state,  and  national  bounties  amounted  to  $677  for  a  new  recruit 
and  an  additional  $100  for  a  man  who  had  seen  service.  Enlisting  in 
one  State,  securing  the  bounty,  deserting  on  the  way  to  the  front, 
enlisting  again  in  order  to  receive  a  second  bounty,  became  all  too 
common  a  practice.  Of  a  detachment  of  625  recruits  from  New  Hamp 
shire  for  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  in  1864,  137  deserted  on  passage  to 
the  front,  82  to  the  enemy's  picket  lines,  and  36  to  the  rear,  leaving 
a  total  of  370  men.  Over  41  per  cent  deserted.  Rhodes,  History  of  the 
United  States,  IV,  429  et  seq.  The  Southern  armies  experienced  simi 
lar  difficulties. 


XXV 

THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR 

THE  Northern  men  who  fought  and  won  the  War  invariably 
declared  that  its  purpose  was  the  " preservation  of  the  Union," 
the  " maintenance  of  the  Constitution,"  the  defeat  of  those 
who  were  seeking  to  * '  destroy ' '  both  the  Constitution  and  the 
Union.  Yet,  it  is  incontestable  that  the  result  of  the  War — 
the  one  permanent  result  of  significance  due  directly  to  the 
War — was  the  alteration  beyond  recognition  of  both  ' t  Consti 
tution"  and  "Union,"  as  those  words  had  been  popularly 
and  commonly  understood  in  1860.  And  every  element  in 
both  was  as  unmistakably  and  unalterably  changed — the  peo 
ple  collectively,  the  individual,  the  idea  of  citizenship,  the 
notion  of  a  State  and  of  its  relation  to  its  own  citizens  as 
well  as  to  the  Federal  government,  the  idea  of  what  was 
meant  by  the  North,  the  South,  the  West. 

The  difficulty  in  comprehending  this  apparent  paradox  lies 
in  the  very  general  failure  to  remember  what  Lincoln  meant 
by  the  words  "Union"  and  "Constitution."  The  strong 
sentiment  in  the  North  in  1860  against  the  right  of  the  Fed 
eral  government  to  coerce  a  State  will  convince  the  student 
that  the  word  "Constitution"  connoted  to  most  people  North 
and  South  before  the  War  a  compact  made  by  sovereign 
States,  and  that  the  "Union"  denoted  a  league  of  units  bound 
together  by  some  tie  not  very  exactly  defined  in  any  one's 
mind.  Men  had  not  yet  rid  themselves  of  the  precedents  and 
traditions  of  the  anti-national  movement  which  had  received 
in  Colonial  and  Revolutionary  times  the  almost  universal  ad 
herence  of  the  people.  To  Lincoln,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
word  "Union"  meant  oneness,  nationality;  the  Constitution 
had  "created"  a  government  of  individuals  and  not  of  States. 

340 


THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR  341 

He  saw  the  issue  of  nationality  as  the  vital  concept  behind  the 
Revolution,  and  indeed  credited  the  makers  of  the  Declara 
tion  of  Independence  with  national  ideas  which  they  would 
have  denied  with  some  vehemence.1  But  he  correctly  ap 
preciated  the  fact  that  the  Constitution  had  signified  to  its 
makers  the  conscious  adoption  of  nationalism  and  in  the  de 
bates  of  the  Convention  he  found  ample  confirmation  of  his 
own  beliefs  and  ideals.2  States'  rights  and  secession  he  saw 

1  On  his  way  to  Washington  in  1861,  Lincoln  made  many  speeches 
whose  tenor  was  substantially  the  same.     "When  the  time  does  come 
[for  action],  I  shall  take  the  ground  that  I  think  is  right— right  for 
the  North,   for  the  South,  for  the  East,  for  the  West,  for  the  whole 
country."     Temporarily,   he  represented  "the  majesty  of  the  nation"; 
so  he  told  audience  after  audience.     That  phrase  was  new  and  pregnant 
with  meaning.     To  the  New  Jersey  Senate  he  said:     "I  am  exceedingly 
anxious  that  that  thing  [struggled  for  in  the  Revolution] — that  some 
thing  even  more  than  national  independence;  that  something  that  hold 
out  a  great  promise  to  all  the  people  of  the  world  to  all  time  to  come — 
I  am  exceedingly  anxious  that  this  Union,  the  Constitution,  and  the 
liberties   of   the   people   shall   be   perpetuated   in   accordance    with    the 
original    idea   for   which  the   struggle   was  made."     His    course   would 
"tend  to  the  perpetuity  of  the  nation,  and  the  liberty  of  these  States 
and  these  people."     Nicolay  and  Hay,  Complete  Works,  VI,  147,   152, 
154,   151,   155,  respectively.     What  he  found  in  the  writings  of  Wash 
ington  were  probably  such  phrases  as  these.     "Let  us  look  to  our  na 
tional  character  and  to  things  beyond  the  present  moment."     Writings 
of  Washington,  Ford's  ed.,  XI,  81.     "I  have  labored,  ever  since  I  have 
been  in  the  service,  to  discourage  all  kinds  of  local  attachments  and 
distinctions  of  country,   denominating  the  whole  by  the  greater  name 
of  American,  but  I  have  found  it  impossible  to  overcome  prejudices." 
Ibid.,  V,  117.     The  wish  and  the  impossibility  of  its  realization  are  both 
significant  for  us. 

2  "A  Union  of  the  States  is  a  Union  of  the  men  composing  them, 
from  whence   a   national  character  results  to   the  whole.  ...  If  they 
formed  a  confederacy  in  some  respects — they  formed  a  Nation  in  others." 
Hunt's  Madison's  Notes,  I,  186.     See  also  I,  233,  248-50.  259,  263,  268, 
274,  285,  etc.,  etc.,  for  clear  evidence  that  both  parties  in  the  Convention 
were  agreed  as  to  what  the  document  they  were  making  meant.     The 
Federalist  and  the  debates  in  the  various  States  over  the  adoption  of 
the  Constitution  show  that  the  leaders  all  understood  that  a  conscious 
choice  in  favor  of  nationalism  was  being  registered.     Lincoln's  doctrine 
of  the  Union  as  older  than  the  States,  as  found  in  the  First  Inaugural 
and  other  state  papers,  will  be  found  in  this  statement  of  Wilson's: 
"Mr.  Wilson  could  not  admit  the  doctrine  that  when  the  Colonies  be 
came    independent    of    G.    Britain,    they    became    independent    also    of 
each  other.     He  read  the  declaration  of  Independence,  observing  thereon 


342  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

were,  like  Anti-Federalism,  anti-national,  striving  openly  for 
a  confederation  of  sovereigns  and  denying  the  existence  of  a 
nation  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word  2a  or  the  possibility  or  de 
sirability  of  attempting  to  create  one.3 

We  must  not  to-day,  however,  mistake  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  for  a  proclamation  of  nationality  made  by  the 
people  as  individuals,  nor  confuse  the  affirmation  of  nationality 
as  the  ultimate  basis  for  permanent  central  government,  made 
in  the  preamble  to  the  Constitution,  with  the  existence  of  na 
tional  sentiment  among  the  people  as  a  whole,  and,  least  of 
all,  with  the  flowering  of  national  consciousness  or  with  its 
realization  of  its  own  existence.  The  Constitution  was  a 
prophecy,  a  forecast  of  what  would  become  true,  and  was 
startlingly  accurate,  for  the  framers  saw  that  the  social,  eco 
nomic,  and  geographical  conditions  in  the  country  made 
eventual  union  inevitable.4  Webster  saw  what  the  Constitu- 

that  the  United  Colonies  were  declared  to  be  free  and  independent 
States;  and  inferring  that  they  were  independent  not  individually,  but 
Unitedly  and  that  they  were  confederated  as  they  were  independent 
States."  IUd.,  I,  188. 

zaThe  Salem  Gazette  for  October  18  and  21,  1814,  contained  long  ar 
ticles  on  States'  sovereignty  and  denounced  nationalism.  "The  truth  is 
that  the  federal  constitution  is  nothing  more  than  a  treaty  between 
independent  sovereignties."  A  war  between  the  States  would  be  a  "pub 
lic  war  between  sovereigns  ...  as  much  as  in  a  war  between  Russia 
and  France."  The  Boston  Daily  Advertiser  in  November,  1814,  said: 
"We  are  too  prone  to  think  that  there  is  a  distinct  sovereignty  known 
by  the  name  of  the  Government  of  the  United  States  and  that  it  exists 
independently  of  the  several  States.  Whereas,  in  fact,  the  national 
compact  is  only  an  agreement  entered  into  between  the  whole  of  the 
States  and  each  individual  State."  The  Columbian  Centinel  of  Boston 
at  this  same  time  declared:  "The  individual  States  are  'free,  sovereign 
and  independent'  nations  .  .  .  [To  the  Federal  government]  our  al 
legiance  is  secondary,  qualified,  and  conditional;  to  our  State  sovereign 
ties  it  is  primary,  universal  and  absolute."  See  these  and  other  ex 
tracts  to  the  same  purpose  in  the  Mississippi  Valley  Historical  Associa 
tion  Proceedings,  1912-13,  VI,  176-188. 

s  General  Quitman  of  Alabama  in  a  public  letter  written  in  1852, 
said:  "If  reorganized  Democracy  admits  the  absolute  doctrines  of  the 
existence  and  sovereignty  of  a  supreme  national  government,  possessing 
power  to  coerce  the  States,  nothing  will  be  lost  by  its  defeat  and  de 
struction."  Hodgson,  Cradle  of  the  Confederacy,  335. 

*  The  great  question  debated  in  the  Convention  was  really  what  were 


THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR  343 

tion  meant  and  his  splendid  affirmation  of  nationality  as  the 
true  ideal  of  a  democratic  people,  his  orations  eulogizing  the 
Colonists  and  the  Men  of  1776  as  patriots,  his  proof  that  the 
Constitution  vested  the  sovereignty  in  the  people  as  individ 
uals  4a  are  landmarks  in  the  history  of  the  achieving  of  Ameri 
can  nationality.  That  the  nation  was  becoming  sentient,  was 
really  beginning  to  signify  its  existence  by  unmistakable  signs, 
Webster  comprehended.  The  greatness  of  the  vision  en 
thralled  many  of  his  listeners :  ' '  Three  or  four  times  I  thought 
my  temples  would  burst  with  the  gush  of  blood,"  wrote  Tick- 
nor.5  But  to  the  majority,  nationality  had  not  yet  become  a 
reality.6  The  logic  of  facts  was  too  strong.  Webster,  how 
ever,  was  followed  by  a  long  line  of  historians,  poets,  and  es 
sayists — Bancroft,  Sparks,  Longfellow,  Lowell,  Whittier, 
Emerson,  Thoreau — who  apostrophized  Freedom  and  Liberty 
as  magnificent  qualities  and  wrote  of  a  great  nationality  en 
nobled  by  finding  its  expression  through  such  concepts.  Only 
by  the  fostering  of  such  ideals  in  the  popular  consciousness 
could  an  aggregation  of  individuals  become  a  people  and 
attain  nationality  in  the  highest  sense ;  only  thus  could  an  en 
tity  evolve  worthy  of  national  consciousness,  and  possessed  of 
those  fundamental  virtues  on  which  it  could  alone  be  nourished 
or  sustained.  Potent  as  was  the  written  word,  the  spoken 
word  was  mightier,  and  the  message  of  Webster  and  of  the 
leaders  of  the  intellectual  world  really  reached  the  Northern 
people  through  the  pulpit,  the  lecture  platform,  and  the  school 

and  what  would  be  likely  to  be  the  social,  economic,  and  geographical 
conditions  in  the  country  and  was  one  national  government  or  two  or 
three  confederacies  the  better  solution.  Again  and  again  they  reached 
the  conclusion  that  union  only  would  be  feasible.  Hunt's  Madison's 
Notes,  I,  255-7,  267,  269,  271  note,  274,  278-9.  288-91,  29S-9,  etc. 

•*a  "That  unity  of  government  which  constitutes  us  one  people."  Web 
ster,  Eulogy  on  Washington,  Works,  1,  230.  Chancellor  Kent,  intro 
ducing  Webster  at  a  public  dinner  in  his  honor  to  celebrate  the  1830 
speech,  said:  "It  turned  the  attention  of  the  public  to  the  groat  doc 
trines  of  the  national  rights  and  national  union."  Webster,  Works,  I, 
194. 

5  Life  and  Letters  of  George  Ticknor,  I,  330. 

6  See  the  quotation  from  De  Tocqueville,  supra,  p.  226. 


344  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

room,  where  the  sermons,  addresses,  and  text-books  all 
breathed  patriotism  and  nationality. 

In  the  anti-slavery  debates,  in  the  searchings  of  conscience, 
North  and  South,  over  the  issues  that  produced  the  War,  we 
hear  the  first  incoherent  mutterings,  the  first  attempts  at  con 
nected  thinking  and  at  self-expression  of  the  new  giant,  wak 
ing  to  consciousness  of  his  own  existence.  The  nation  was 
seeking  in  mental  anguish  national  ideals,  moral  standards, 
ethical  concepts,  policies — broad  in  scope,  lofty  in  purpose,  uni 
versal  in  application  and  meaning.  From  individuals  here 
and  there  came  something  like  utterance  of  the  notions  with 
whose  mystic  purport  the  national  subconscious  mind  was  full, 
the  eager  expression  as  conscious  thought  through  a  human 
and  individualistic  medium  of  the  ethical  and  moral  com  ^pts 
of  which  the  people  as  a  whole  were  but  dimly  conscious.  The 
greatness  of  such  men  lies  not  in  themselves.  They  are  vessels 
of  the  spirit,  sensitive  media  for  the  apprehension  and  ex 
pression  of  the  seething  content  of  human  sentiment  strug 
gling  round  them  for  utterance. 

In  Lincoln,  the  nation,  North  and  South,  grew  to  see  it 
self.  He  was  in  the  highest  possible  sense  a  representative 
man,  making  the  nation  conscious  of  its  oneness  of  purpose 
and  idealism,  of  the  glory  and  splendor  of  nationality,  and  of 
the  wondrous  possibilities  open  to  a  great  people  who  should 
be  filled  with  the  ideals  of  unity,  democracy,  and  liberty.  In 
him  and  through  him,  both  North  and  South  awakened  to  a 
consciousness  of  the  meaning  of  American  development,  and 
realized  that  the  War  had  actually  been  an  attempt,  all  un 
witting,  to  destroy  this  collective  personality  before  it  had  at 
tained  consciousness.  And  in  the  last  year  of  the  War,  as  the 
consciousness  of  that  great  vital  fact  became  universal,  in  the 
moment  when  the  glorious  conception  of  what  nationality 
meant  flashed  upon  the  vast  majority  of  Americans,  a  new  na 
tion  was  born.  For  a  nation  is;  it  springs  into  life,  full 
fledged,  in  the  imagery  of  the  old  Greek  description  of  the 
birth  of  Minerva,  and  at  once  is  possessed  of  sentient  life 
and  vast  powers.  Washington  had  made  us  free  and  inde- 


THE  HESULTS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR  345 

pendent;  Lincoln  became  the  father  of  American  nationality. 
He  was  not  the  man  who  made  it  possible  nor  the  man  whose 
glowing  words  first  carried  the  vision  to  men's  minds,  but  the 
man  in  whom  and  through  whom  it  became  an  actuality. 
Webster  had  made  New  England  see  the  vision ;  Lincoln  made 
the  South,  which  neither  saw  nor  believed,  which  was  in  arms 
against  the  very  concept,  not  only  realize  that  the  object  of 
the  War  was  not  conquest,  the  abolition  of  slavery,  nor  the 
abrogation  of  constitutional  rights,  but  the  creation  of  a  na 
tion  out  of  a  divided  people.  It  was  a  great  achievement  to 
have  convinced  those  whose  own  interests  urged  them  to  ac 
cept  the  idea  of  nationality ;  it  was  a  thousand-fold  greater  to 
have  convinced  those  whose  interests  were  to  be  vitally  in 
jured  by  the  acceptance  of  the  idea,  of  its  greatness  and 
worth.  The  most  immediate  and  most  important  result  of  the 
War  was  the  creation  of  the  American  nation  and  this  result 
we  owe  chiefly  to  Abraham  Lincoln. 

One  is  tempted  almost  to  doubt  the  evidence  of  his  own 
eyes  and  look  upon  this  sudden  "creation"  of  national  con 
sciousness  as  a  miracle  of  that  sort  which  cannot  in  its  very 
nature  be  the  work  of  one  man.  How  could  a  nation,  as  it 
were,  spring  into  existence  ?  Is  it  true,  after  all,  that  nations 
are  created  by  fighting,  that  great  issues  can  be  actually  de 
cided  by  battles?  The  "creation"  of  the  new  nation,  in  this 
particular  instance,  consisted  in  the  achieving  by  the  majority 
of  a  consciousness  of  facts  and  tendencies  which  had  always 
been  true.  As  a  child  takes  form  in  its  mother's  womb  and 
exists  before  it  makes  its  entry  into  the  world,  so  a  nation 
grows,  all  unconscious  of  its  own  existence;  and,  as  with  the 
child,  we  date  its  life  from  its  first  moment  of  consciousness. 
The  War  made  the  people  aware  of  what  the  Northern  leaders 
had  long  seen ;  it  convinced  the  South  that  the  position  of  the 
North  was  the  true  one.  The  War  showed  the  people,  North, 
South,  and  West,  what  the  President  of  the  United  States  had 
meant  by  the  Union  and  the  Constitution,  and  that  what  he 
said  was  true. 

In  a  sense,  the  War  created  the  nation:  it  stimulated,  as 


346  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

nothing  else  could  have  done,  the  growth  of  common  sentiment. 
The  armies  brought  together  men  from  the  most  distant  sec 
tions  and  made  them  acquainted,  showing  them  their  common 
interests  and  beliefs,  the  essential  identity  of  their  democratic 
ideals,  their  common  humanity  and  sympathy.  The  prisoners 
in  both  camps  learned  how  superficial  were  the  differences 
which  they  in  their  ignorance  had  assumed  to  be  so  great; 
with  the  vastness  of  the  country  and  of  its  natural  resources, 
most  men  became  acquainted  for  the  first  time.  The  War  gave 
the  country  a  common  aim  for  which  to  work  and  welded  the 
North  and  the  West  tightly  together,  and  made  the  Southern 
men  more  conscious  of  their  similarities  than  of  their  differ 
ences. 

Again,  the  War  was  a  great  social  leveler  and  brought  to 
gether  in  the  trenches  men  hitherto  sundered  by  wealth  and 
social  position.  In  the  South  especially,  poor  white  and 
planter  met  on  terms  of  equality  and  each  learned  to  respect 
and  admire  the  sterling  traits  of  the  other.  Intercourse  was 
stimulated  and  increased  and  the  necessities  of  the  struggle 
gave  an  immediacy  to  the  attempt  to  agree  upon  the  solution  of 
common  problems  and  difficulties  which  forced  the  process  of 
the  growth  of  a  consensus  of  opinion.  Gradually,  the  non- 
essentials  became  apparent  and  were  discarded  by  both  parties ; 
gradually  the  really  vital  issue  of  nationality  was  pushed  to 
the  fore,  almost  entirely  obscuring  slavery  and  States7  sover 
eignty.6*  The  average  man  thought  perforce  much  about  the 
reason  for  the  War,  about  its  purpose,  about  differences  and 
similarities;  and,  as  the  essential  nobility  of  each  be 
came  clearer  to  the  other,  both  North  and  South  began  to  ask 
themselves  why  they  fougHt  at  all.  The  simple  presence  of 
so  many  men  in  the  various  armies,  the  necessity  of  travel,  the 

«a  "What  was  at  first  a  struggle  to  maintain  the  outward  form  of  our 
government  has  become  a1  contest  to  preserve  the  life  and  assert  the 
supreme  will  of  the  nation.  Even  in  April  1861,  .  .  .  there  was  an 
instinctive  feeling  that  the  very  germinating  principle  of  our  nation 
ality  was  at  stake  and  that  unity  of  territory  was  but  another  name 
for  unity  of  idea,  nay,  was  impossible  without  it  and  undesirable  if  it 
were  possible."  Lowell  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  October  1864,  p.  566. 


THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR  347 

process  of  acquaintance  was  making  the  whole  community 
aware  that  a  nation  existed,  and  this  dawning  of  conscious 
ness  was  in  itself  the  process  of  birth.  The  War  was  the 
travail  of  the  new  nation.  It  proved  all  those  things  to  the 
common  man  which  he  must  otherwise  have  waited  long  to 
appreciate.  It  showed  him  what  Lincoln  meant  and  proved 
its  truth. 

The  War  had  been  literally  won  by  the  forces  of  nationality 
over  those  of  separateness ;  by  the  geographical  and  com 
mercial  factors  making  the  North  comparatively  stronger  than 
the  South.  Here  again  the  conflict  merely  made  apparent 
the  existing  fact  that  the  forces  of  union  were  and  long  had 
been  predominant  in  the  life  of  the  people.  They  had  pro 
duced  the  Constitution  and  the  numerous  compromises  and 
had  postponed  the  War  for  seventy  years.  The  accidents  of 
geography  and  of  settlement  had  produced  communities  which 
were  and  are  singularly  interdependent.  Only  three  natural 
divisions  existed:  the  Atlantic  Coast,  the  Mississippi  Valley, 
the  Pacific  Slope.  With  these  natural  lines,  other  lines  of  heat 
and  cold,  of  rainfall,  of  productivity  of  the  soil,  and  the  like, 
did  not  at  all  coincide.  The  geographical  divisions  ran  north 
and  south ;  the  climatic  and  geological  lines  ran  east  and  west. 
The  accident  of  settlement,  spreading  westward  across  all  of 
these  natural  areas,  coinciding  with  none,  forming  succes 
sively  small  communities  favored  by  this  natural  advantage, 
fettered  by  that  natural  obstacle,  did  create,  as  Gerry  said, 
" neither  the  same  nation  nor  different  nations."  No  sec- 
tionalization  of  the  country  upon  economic,  political,  racial,  or 
religious  lines  was  possible.7  Nature  had  also  failed  to  pro- 

7  Lincoln's  Message  to  Congress  of  Dec.  1,  1862,  contains  a  remark 
ably  clear  exposition  of  the  facts  described  in  these  paragraphs.  "That 
portion  of  the  earth's  surface  which  is  owned  and  inhabited  by  the 
people  of  the  United  States  is  well  adapted  to  be  the  home  of  one 
national  family,  and  it  is  not  well  adapted  for  two  or  more.  .  .  .  Phys 
ically  speaking  we  cannot  separate.  We  cannot  remove  our  respective 
sections  from  each  other,  nor  build  an  impassable  wall  between  them. 
.  .  .  There  is  no  line,  straight  or  crooked,  suitable  for  a  national 
boundary  upon  which  to  divide.  Trace  through,  from  east  to  west, 
upon  the  line  between  the  free  and  slave  country,  and  we  shall  find  a 


348  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

vide  any  of  the  political  entities  with  separate  methods  of 
communication  with  the  outside  world:  the  abundant  water 
ways  served  of  necessity  many  rather  than  one.  All  the  tiny 
groups  in  existence  in  1760,  the  different  parts  of  the  broad 
belt  of  settlement  in  1789,  the  different  sections  of  the  con 
tinent  east  of  the  Mississippi  in  1860,  were  interdependent,  in 
terrelated  by  economic,  political,  racial,  and  religious  factors, 
whose  potency  was  already  appreciated  by  the  leaders. 

Yet,  while  the  country  remained  sparsely  settled,  while  the 
most  pressing  problems  were  local,  States'  rights,  local  sover 
eignty,  were  naturally  paramount.  They  coincided  best  with 
actual  conditions.  But  the  growth  of  each  succeeding  decade, 
the  resultant  closer  contiguity  of  States  with  States,  of  indi 
viduals  with  individuals,  the  rapid  growth  of  the  area  of  set 
tlement,  were  creating  common  problems  of  constantly  greater 
significance,  whose  settlement  could  not  long  be  ignored  or 
postponed,  and  which  had  necessarily  to  be  settled  by  general 
discussion  and  compromise.  The  nationality  of  the  common 

little  more  than  one-third  of  its  length  are  rivers,  easy  to  be  crossed, 
and  populated,  or  soon  to  be  populated  thickly  upon  both  sides;  while 
nearly  all  its  remaining  length  are  merely  surveyors'  lines,  over  which 
people  may  walk  back  and  forth  without  any  consciousness  of  their 
presence.  No  part  of  this  line  can  be  made  any  more  difficult  to  pass 
by  writing  it  down  on  paper  or  parchment  as  a  national  boundary.  .  .  . 
As  part  of  one  nation,  its  people  [in  the  Mississippi  Valley]  now  find, 
and  may  forever  find  their  way  to  Europe  by  New  York,  to  South 
America  and  Africa  by  New  Orleans,  and  to  Asia  by  San  Francisco. 
But  separate  our  common  country  into  two  nations  as  designed  by  the 
present  rebellion,  and  every  man  of  this  great  interior  region  is  thereby 
cut  off  from  some  one  or  more  of  these  outlets — not  perhaps  by  a 
physical  barrier,  but  by  embarrassing  and  onerous  trade  regulations. 
.  .  .  These  outlets,  east,  west,  and  south,  are  indispensable  to  the  well- 
being  of  the  people  inhabiting,  and  to  inhabit,  this  vast  interior  region. 
.  .  .  Our  national  strife  springs  not  from  our  permanent  part,  not  from 
the  land  we  inhabit,  not  from  our  national  homestead.  There  is  no 
possible  severing  of  this  but  would  multiply  and  not  mitigate  evils 
among  us.  In  all  its  adaptations  and  aptitudes,  it  demands  union  and 
abhors  separation.  In  fact,  it  would  ere  long  force  reunion,  however 
much  of  blood  and  treasure  the  separation  might  have  cost.  Our  strife 
pertains  to  ourselves — to  the  passing  generations  of  men;  and  it  can 
without  convulsion  be  hushed  forever  with  the  passing  of  one  genera 
tion."  Complete  Works,  VIII,  110-116. 


THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR  349 

problems  was  growing  each  decade  clearer  and  clearer. 
Withal,  the  benefits  of  nationality  were  becoming  rapidly  more 
obvious: — the  freedom  of  intercourse  between  the  communi 
ties  so  vitally  dependent  on  each  other  for  the  continuity  of 
economic  life,  unhampered  by  the  artificial  restrictions  of 
frontiers  and  customs  barriers;  the  untrammeled  use  of  the 
natural  highways  by  all ;  the  freedom  of  the  movement  of  in 
dividuals  from  State  to  State  without  loss  of  civil  and  legal 
privileges;  trade  with  Europe  on  equal  terms,  all  this  the 
War  made  evident  to  the  average  man.  Travel  and  military 
campaigns  made  clear  the  vastness  of  the  country,  its  struc 
ture,  its  interdependence,  and  above  all,  the  necessity  of  the 
common  use  of  the  lines  of  communication  through  the  Mo 
hawk  Valley,  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad,  and  the 
Cumberland  Gap.  As  never  before  men  saw  that  the  West 
was  tied  to  New  York  and  Chicago  by  the  railroads ;  that  the 
railroads  of  most  consequence  were  interstate,  not  local ;  that 
the  really  profitable  commerce  was  interstate  and  national; 
that  the  country  was  still  dependent  on  its  market  in  Europe 
and  was  therefore  tied  fast  to  the  Atlantic  seaboard  by  the 
necessity  of  contact  with  Europe  through  the  ports.  Even 
local  trade  was  vitally  dependent  on  the  common  use  of  the 
Hudson,  the  Delaware,  the  Mississippi,  and  the  Great  Lakes. 
Men  began  to  realize  that  a  central  government  strong  enough 
to  prevent  individual  States  from  interfering  with  each 
other's  mutual  rights  was  an  absolutely  indispensable  political 
basis  for  the  economic  fabric  upon  whose  solidarity  and  rapid 
development  the  prosperity  of  the  country  depended. 

Indeed,  it  was  slowly  borne  in  upon  the  people  by  the  ex- 
perien&s  of  the  War  that  these  natural  conditions  were  the 
real  difficulties  with  which  the  sections  had  been  contending, 
and  that  they  were  immutable— to  be  conquered  neither  by 
fighting  nor  argument,  factors  to  be  recognized  and  to  which 
all  sections  must  adjust  themselves  as  best  as  they  could. 
They  saw  too  that  the  pressure  of  these  factors  for  settlement 
was  increased  by  the  growth  of  the  country,  by  the  growing 
density  of  population,  and  by  the  new  complexity  of  the 


350  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

economic  fabric.  The  existence  of  two  confederacies  would 
not  solve  the  vital  problems  at  all,  would  make  their  solution 
incalculably  more  difficult,  and  result  constantly  in  issues 
which  two  sovereign  nations  could  not  with  dignity  com 
promise  nor  with  indifference  leave  unsettled,  and  which  they 
could,  least  of  all,  decide  by  an  appeal  to  arms.  The  prob 
lems  of  North,  South,  and  West  were  not  different  problems 
but  different  phases  or  complementary  results  of  the  same 
problems.  The  railroads  and  the  telegraph  were  already  knit 
ting  the  country  together  and  would  in  the  future  provide  that 
close  contact  between  all  its  parts  and  that  ease  of  movement 
between  them  which  would  be  certain  to  strengthen  those 
forces  making  for  nationality.  As  Lowell  said,  the  very  stars 
in  their  courses  fought  for  Union.8 

The  result  of  the  War  upon  the  North  had  been  striking. 
The  commercial  crisis  of  1861  and  1862,  the  new  contact  with 
the  West,  the  direct  trade  with  Europe  thanks  to  the  western 
grain  and  the  new  railroad  trunk  lines,  the  new  industries 
created  by  the  needs  of  the  army,  and  the  new  economic  wants 
resultant  upon  the  great  prosperity  of  the  years  1864  and 
1865,  had  given  industry  in  all  its  phases  a  jolt  which  had 
advanced  it  decades  in  development.  The  War  made  the 
North  richer  as  a  whole  and  laid  the  foundation  of  many 
individual  fortunes.  The  causes  are  not  far  to  seek.  First 
and  foremost,  the  North  had  been  compelled  to  draw  heavily 
upon  its  resources  of  capital  and  had  loaned  the  govern 
ment  capital  which  would  normally  not  have  been  invested  in 
industrial  securities.  The  Federal  government  then  prac 
tically  offered  bounties  to  private  individuals  who  were  will 
ing  to  utilize  this  capital  for  the  production  of  military  stores. 
Much  capital  that  would  normally  have  been  invested  for 
permanent  returns  and  of  which  the  community  would  have 
spent  only  the  interest  was  spent  in  its  entirety  and  posterity 
was  to  repay  it.  The  high  prices  paid  by  the  government  en 
abled  the  people  to  bear  heavy  direct  and  indirect  taxes,  but  the 
size  of  the  debt  at  the  end  of  the  war,  nearly  three  billions 
s  Atlantic  Monthly,  January  1861. 


THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR  351 

of  dollars,  indicates  the  amount  of  capital  actually  distributed 
among  individuals  then  alive  which  posterity  was  to  replace. 
Undoubtedly,  too,  the  necessities  of  the  War  and  the  high 
prices  stimulated  production  and  investment  and  caused  the 
spurs  of  ambition  to  urge  the  individual  onward  at  a  faster 
rate  than  before.  The  War  created  a  new  North,  different 
in  spirit,  in  temper,  in  ambitions,  and  wealthier,  more  confi 
dent,  more  complaisant  than  the  North  of  1860. 

The  War  also  made  apparent  the  weakness  of  the  economic 
and  social  structure  at  the  South.  The  Confederacy  had  been 
constructed  upon  the  belief  that  the  slave  States  were  inde 
pendent  of  the  North  in  fact,  and  that  the  political  and  con 
stitutional  separation  would  merely  adjust  theories  to  reali 
ties.  The  War  proved  the  falsity  of  the  notion.  What  had 
seemed  enormous,  fabulous  wealth  melted  away  the  moment 
the  blockade  became  effective,  and  the  South  saw  only  too 
clearly  that  its  economic  fabric  was  an  artificial  creation,  de 
pendent  upon  conditions  whose  continuance  could  not  be  as 
sured  by  the  simple  political  expedients  of  passing  ordinances 
of  secession  and  making  a  new  constitution.  Not  the  Consti 
tution  of  the  United  States,  not  the  tariff,  not  Congress,  but 
the  very  character  of  Southern  civilization  was  the  true  dif 
ficulty.  The  weakness  of  the  Confederacy  was  less  military 
than  it  was  economic  and  social.  There  was  no  substructure 
on  which  the  political  entity  could  rest,  no  bricks  out  of  which 
to  build  a  new  nation.  The  War  did  not  itself  destroy  the 
slavocracy:  it  removed  of  necessity  those  props  on  which  the 
slave  power  had  depended  and  made  apparent  the  frailty  and 
artificiality  of  the  structure.  The  old  regime  at  the  South 
was  not  destroyed;  it  collapsed.  In  the  culture  of  cotton  by 
forced  labor  there  was  no  proper  economic  basis  for  an  inde 
pendent  nation  and  the  War  proved  it  even  before  the  fighting 
began  in  earnest. 

The  artificial  factors  were  now  evident.  The  high  degree 
of  profit  obtained  from  the  cotton-culture  had  been  primarily 
due  to  the  unexampled  fertility  of  the  virgin  soil  in  the  river- 
bottoms,  which  yielded  enormous  returns  even  to  extensive 


352  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

cultivation  by  the  crudest  of  forced  labor.  The  profit  had 
also  depended  on  the  growth  of  the  demand  for  raw  cotton  in 
the  North  and  in  Europe  at  the  same  rate  at  which  the 
planters  had  increased  the  supply.  That  the  demand  before 
1860  scarcely  ever  failed  to  equal  the  supply  was  a  remark 
able  fact,  but  there  was  no  reason  to  suppose  it  would  con 
tinue  indefinitely  to  do  so.  Above  all,  freedom  of  access  to 
the  Northern  and  European  markets,  a  merchant  marine  and 
cheap  freights  were  even  more  essential.  In  the  nature  of 
things,  the  continued  cooperation  of  all  these  factors  could  not 
be  indefinitely  assured.  The  amount  of  virgin  soil  was  limited 
by  Nature.  An  increase  in  the  value  of  slaves ;  a  decrease  in 
the  proportionate  return;  a  falling  off  of  the  demand;  the 
discovery  of  a  new  source  of  supply;  interference  with  free 
dom  of  intercourse;  expensive  freights;  the  alteration  of  any 
single  factor  might  destroy  the  profitableness  of  the  invest 
ment,  and  such  a  change  might  be  produced  at  any  moment 
by  natural  forces  over  which  no  human  agency  could  exert 
the  slightest  influence.  The  War  stopped  intercourse  with 
Europe  and  with  the  North  by  the  interposition  of  a  highly 
artificial  barrier,  the  blockade,  which  the  growing  of  cotton 
had  not  provided  the  South  with  any  means  to  remove.  The 
whole  fabric  of  the  slave  power  instantly  crumbled  and  died. 
The  South  found  itself  pauperized,  without  any  industrial 
life  at  all.  Its  land  and  slaves,  fabulously  valuable  on  paper, 
potentially  valuable  for  growing  cotton,  were  an  utterly  worth 
less  encumbrance  when  one  single  factor  in  the  artificial  struc 
ture  of  Southern  life  was  removed.  The  South  was  not  inde 
pendent;  it  was  absolutely  dependent  upon  the  North,  the 
West,  and  Europe  for  existence  at  all.  The  War  proved  it. 
The  only  arable  land  in  use  was  not  suitable  for  grain;  the 
only  agricultural  tools  the  planters  had  were  inadequate  for 
the  diversified  intensive  agriculture  needed  to  sustain  the  life 
of  the  community;  the  only  skill  the  millions  of  slaves  pos 
sessed  was  valueless  in  the  crisis  and  they  were  too  ignorant 
and  too  lacking  in  adaptability  to  be  forced  into  new  in 
dustries  in  time  to  be  of  any  avail.  And  even  had  they 


THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR  35:1 

possessed  adaptability,  the  necessary  raw  materials  were  lack 
ing. 

It  began  to  be  evident  to  the  Southerners  that  the  cotton- 
culture  had  in  its  nature  prevented  the  growth  of  a  strong, 
well-knit  community  by  locating  the  people  on  large  planta 
tions  miles  from  each  other,  by  putting  a  premium  on  the 
occupation  of  vast  areas  of  soil  only  a  tithe  of  which  was  in 
actual  use.  Towns  and  cities  had  not  been  able  to  grow ;  com 
munity  life,  the  daily  contact  of  the  people,  had  been  re 
duced  to  a  minimum,  and  they  had  not  acquired  the  habit 
of  acting  in  concert  nor  learned  the  necessity  of  cooperation. 
States'  rights  had  thrived;  the  individual  had  been  unham 
pered  by  State  and  central  government ;  and  the  very  success 
of  local  government  made  difficult  the  sort  of  common  action 
which  the  War  made  imperative.  The  social  and  political 
structure  of  the  South  did  not  furnish  a  proper  basis  even  for 
strong  State  governments  and  still  less  afforded  adequate  sup 
port  to  a  central  government  struggling  with  the  administra 
tive  difficulties  of  a  great  conflict. 

The  separateness  of  the  Southerners  had  also  prevented  the 
growth  of  a  system  of  transportation  which  would  adequately 
connect  the  various  scattered  communities  with  each  other. 
The  splendid  river  systems,  eked  out  by  a  few  miles  of  nar 
row-gauge  railroad  here  and  there,  put  every  plantation  into 
cheap  and  easy  contact  with  the  markets  for  cotton  and  made 
a  network  of  railroads,  east  and  west,  north  and  south,  need 
less  for  the  ordinary  daily  life  of  the  community  before  the 
War.  But,  when  the  Federal  gunboats  had  occupied  the  sea- 
coast  and  the  rivers,  the  only  universal  system  of  transporta 
tion  the  South  had  possessed  was  lost,  and  it  found  itself  with 
out  adequate  means  of  communication  and  unable  to  utilize 
promptly  and  efficiently  such  resources  as  it  did  possess.  The 
truth  was  that  South  Carolina,  Alabama,  Louisiana  and  the 
rest  had  been  in  contact  with  the  North  and  with  Europe  far 
more  than  with  each  other ;  they  were  not  even  interdependent. 
Not  the  South  as  a  whole,  but  literally  every  State  and  al 
most  every  plantation  was  dependent  upon  easy  and  direct 


354  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

contact  with  the  North  and  with  Europe.  The  Southern 
States  had  never  actually  cooperated  with  each  other  in  eco 
nomic,  political,  or  constitutional  life.  While  the  leaders  had 
lived  together  at  Washington  and  had  voted  as  a  unit  in  the 
Senate,  the  States  at  home  had  gone  each  its  own  way.  The 
Confederacy  itself  was  an  artificial  aggregation  of  small  iso 
lated  communities  which  were  for  the  first  time  attempting  life 
in  common.  The  South  was  a  geographical  expression,  not  a 
nation,  not  even  an  entity.  With  its  constitutional  professions 
the  facts  dicl  not  agree.  The  War  made  strikingly  apparent 
what  had  always  been  true. 

The  vital  objection  to  slavery  was  that  it  was  undemo 
cratic  and  contrary  to  every  legal  and  social  principle  of 
American  life.  It  created  obviously  a  three-caste  system,  the 
slave-holding  whites,  the  non-slave-holding  whites,  and  the 
slaves.  Forced  labor  was  and  always  will  be  nominally 
cheaper  than  free  labor  and  the  very  existence  of  the  slave 
deprived  the  poor  white  of  economic  opportunity.  He  could 
not  compete  in  the  cotton  fields  with  the  negro;  so  long  as 
the  degree  of  profit  in  the  cotton-culture  so  greatly  exceeded 
the  profit  of  producing  anything  else  at  the  South,  he  was 
excluded  from  any  other  industry,  and  would  exist  merely 
by  the  labor  of  his  own  hands  on  the  small  portion  of  less 
productive  soil  that  might  fall  to  his  lot.  Slavery,  which 
robbed  the  poor  white  of  his  economic,  political,  and  social 
freedom,  put  the  power  and  wealth  into  the  hands  of  a  small 
oligarchy.  In  addition,  slavery  was  undemocratic  because 
it  deprived  the  negroes  and  poor  whites  alike  of  opportunity 
for  individual  development  and  aggrandizement.  From  the 
lack  of  stimulus  to  progress,  from  the  general  lack  of  edu 
cation,  from  the  realization  among  the  planters  that  any 
improvement  of  the  slaves  and  poor  whites  threatened  the 
extent  and  security  of  their  own  control,  resulted  that  stag 
nation  of  community  life  which  prevented  any  truly  organic 
development.  The  Confederacy  was  a  democracy  whose  fun 
damental  principles  were  daily  abrogated  by  its  own  life.  It 
was  an  oligarchy  which  had  theoretically  renounced  the  use 


THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR  355 

of  those  administrative  and  legal  forms  by  which  alone 
oligarchies  had  governed  great  masses  of  men.  A  democratic 
community  in  which  four-fifths  of  the  population  was  excluded 
by  artificial  restrictions  from  actual  participation  in  the  life 
of  the  community  was  a  house  built  upon  the  sands,  certain 
to  perish  under  the  first  stress  of  unfavorable  circumstances. 
An  oligarchy  under  the  forms  of  democracy  carried  the  seeds 
of  its  destruction  in  its  own  constitution.  Both  were  doomed. 
The  actual  social  and  political  structure  of  the  Confederacy 
was  utterly  inconsistent  with  and  repugnant  to  its  constitu 
tion.  The  War  made  the  fact  appallingly  clear.  The  South 
erners  saw  it  the  clearest,  for  the  presence  of  the  poor  whites 
in  the  army  side  by  side  with  the  old  ruling  class  had  been 
a  lesson  in  democracy  for  both  and  had  opened  their  eyes 
to  their  common  humanity.  The  willingness  of  the  Southern 
Government  to  free  the  slaves  who  would  serve  in  the  army, 
the  comparatively  slight  regret  expressed  at  the  South  over 
the  abolition  of  slavery,  both  showed  the  working  of  the 
leaven  of  democracy  under  the  powerful  stimulus  of  circum 
stances. 

Above  all,  the  realization  that  slavery  was  undemocratic 
and  unprogressive  convinced  Lincoln,  long  before  the  war 
was  over,  that  a  democratic  nation  could  neither  be  preserved, 
restored,  or  created  unless  this  vitally  undemocratic  institu 
tion  were  abolished.9  The  South  had  not  been  one  with  the 
North  because  this  " peculiar  institution"  had  been  undem 
ocratic;  and  it  could  not  become  democratic  and  begin  to 
develop  in  harmony  with  the  genius  of  American  institutions 
until  slavery  was  destroyed.9*  He  saw,  however,  in  1865,  that 

»  "He  wished  the  reunion  of  all  the  States  perfected,  and  so  effected 
as  to  remove  all  causes  of  disturbance  in  the  future;  and  to  attain  this 
end,  it  was  necessary  that  the  original  disturbing  cause  [slavery] 
should,  if  possible,  be  rooted  out."  Nicolay  and  Hay,  Complete  Works, 
X,  353.  Slavery  "must  be  always  and  everywhere  hostile  to  the  prin 
ciples  of  republican  government;  justice  and  the  national  safety  demand 
its  utter  and  complete  extirpation  from  the  soil  of  the  republic."  Ibid., 
X,  119.  See  also  191,  193-7. 

»a"The  popular  understanding  has  been  gradually  enlightened  as  to 
the  real  causes  of  the  War,  and  in  consequence  of  that  enlightenment,  a 


356  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

the  War  had  already  done  the  work.  The  Planter  class  had 
actually  been  dethroned;  the  old  social  and  economic  struc 
ture  had  collapsed  and  had  actually  freed  the  poor  whites 
from  their  shackles;  many  slaves  had  already  left  the  cotton 
plantations;  others  would  follow  as  soon  as  opportunity 
offered.  The  downfall  of  the  old  slave  power  was  a  fact  and 
there  remained  only  the  declaration  of  the  freedom  of  the 
negro  from  legal  slavery  to  make  the  emancipation  of  the 
poor  white  a  reality,  the  future  development  of  the  negro 
a  possibility,  and  the  building  of  a  new  South  upon  truly 
democratic  principles  a  certainty.  The  obstacles  hindering 
the  growth  of  democracy  had  been  artificial  and  not  funda 
mental,  and  the  War  had  removed  them.  Under  any  circum 
stances,  a  complete  readjustment  of  economic  and  social  life 
at  the  South  would  be  necessary;  the  process  might  be  long; 
the  suffering  to  individuals  would  be  considerable ;  but  Lincoln 
felt  that  the  North  owed  it  to  the  true  South  to  abolish  by  con 
stitutional  amendment  the  artificial  fetters  with  which  custom 
and  tradition  had  hitherto  allowed  the  oligarchy  of  great  plant 
ers  to  hamper  the  development  of  the  community  at  large.  The 
North  must  not  nullify  the  result  of  the  War — the  actual 
downfall  of  the  old  economic  and  social  fabric  built  on 
slavery.  It  must  insist  that  the  New  South  should  be  a 
product  of  true  democracy. 

The  War,  nevertheless,  resulted  in  an  extreme  economic 
exhaustion  of  the  South.  It  had  destroyed  the  old  fabric 
and  had  put  nothing  in  its  place.  Before  the  War  there 
had  been  a  few  enormous  private  fortunes,  a  considerable 
number  of  well-to-do  families,  while  the  great  majority  of 
the  poor  whites  and  free  negroes  as  well  as  the  slaves  had 
been  on  the  very  margin  of  subsistence.  The  great  fortunes 
had  flown  in  the  first  year  of  the  War,  and  the  produce 
taxes  levied  in  kind  and  the  forceable  seizure  of  property 

purpose  has  grown  up,  defining  itself  slowly  into  clearer  consciousness, 
to  finish  the  War  in  the  only  way  that  will  keep  it  finished,  by  rooting 
out  the  evil  principle  [slavery]  from  which  it  sprang."  Lowell  in  the 
Atlantic  Monthly,  October  1864,  p.  572. 


THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR  357 

by  the  commissary  department  for  the  use  of  the  army  had 
pretty  well  deprived  every  one  who  had  anything  at  all  of 
nearly  all  he  had.  Though  the  South  had  never  been  wealthy 
except  on  paper,  though  its  richest  men  had  possessed  large 
incomes  rather  than  tangible  wealth  whose  continued  ex 
istence  was  assured,  the  War  had  taken  from  the  community 
the  little  it  had  possessed.  The  Confederacy  was  bankrupt 
in  1861 ;  its  citizens  had  little  left  in  1865.  Even  the  cotton, 
from  whose  sale  once  the  War  was  over  many  had  expected 
to  recoup  their  fortunes,  was  confiscated  by  the  Northern 
government.  It  should  never  be  forgotten  that  the  poverty 
of  the  individual  Southerner,  the  dethroning  of  the  planters, 
the  enfranchisement  of  the  poor  white,  the  emancipation  of 
the  negro  were  direct  results  of  four  years  of  war.  Recon 
struction  intensified  the  suffering  but  was  not  its  cause.  The 
inevitable  difficulties  of  readjustment  were  certain  to  cause 
suffering  to  many  individuals,  though  the  community  as  a 
whole  was  benefiting  from  the  change. 

But  upon  the  great  constitutional  and  legal  issues,  out  of 
which  hostilities  had  arisen,  the  War  decided  nothing.  The 
great  fundamental  issues  of  American  development — the  re 
lation  of  the  States  to  each  other,  to  the  individual  citizen, 
and  to  the  central  government;  the  economic  dependence  of 
the  country  upon  Europe ;  the  questions  of  a  sound  and  ade 
quate  currency,  of  the  tariff,  and  of  the  public  lands — the 
War  did  not  settle  at  all.  It  could  not ;  moral,  ethical,  legal, 
constitutional  issues  are  not  solved  by  fighting.  The  War 
simply  decided  that  in  the  discussion  and  formulation  of  a 
solution,  the  North  should  play  the  preponderant  part  and 
that  the  solution  should  be  in  harmony  with  the  principles 
of  nationality  and  democracy  as  the  North  understood  them. 
The  War  made  the  most  important  single  element  in  the 
situation  the  opinion  of  the  North.  It  was  now  necessary 
for  the  North  to  find  out  what  its  opinion  was. 

The  logic  of  facts  at  the  close  of  the  War  made  the  dis 
cussion  and  settlement  of  the  great  problems  peculiarly  diffi 
cult  and  the  arrival  at  anything  like  a  decision  mutually 


358  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

agreeable  to  all  parties  in  both  sections  practically  impossible. 
The  mere  fact  that  in  a  great  war,  costing  thousands  of  lives 
and  billions  of  dollars,  the  Northern  armies  had  been  victo 
rious,  was  to  most  men  proof  that  a  great  issue  had  been  at 
stake  about  which  there  was  an  ascertainable  right  and  wrong. 
Did  not  victory  in  fact  show  that  the  North  had  been  right? 
If  there  was  no  right  and  wrong  about  it,  and  if  the  South 
had  not  been  wrong,  why  had  the  War  been  fought  at  all? 
It  was  unthinkable  to  the  Northern  men  in  1865  that  they 
had  conquered  in  a  fight  for  a  principle  and  had  espoused  the 
wrong  side.  If  so,  the  War  was  not  only  a  mistake  and  a 
blunder,  but  a  crime  of  unbelievable,  horrible  magnitude. 
It  was  inevitable  that  the  men  who  won  the  War  should 
have  concluded,  quite  aside  from  history,  precedents,  morality, 
and  law,  that  they  had  decided  a  great  question  in  the  right. 
Granting,  then,  as  an  axiom  which  few  Northern  minds  ques 
tioned,  that  the  South  had  been  wrong,  should  she  not  be 
punished  for  it  or  at  least  forced  to  acknowledge  that  she 
had  been  wrong  and  compelled  to  take  such  steps  as  should 
prevent  the  recurrence  of  that  wrong?  Nothing  else  galled 
the  South  quite  so  much  as  this  bit  of  logic.  The  very  idea 
that  they  had  been  " wrong"  rankled  in  the  Southern  mind; 
the  very  indefiniteness  of  the  feeling,  the  entire  lack  of  any 
specific  thing  which  had  been  the  wrong  of  wrongs,  embittered 
the  relations  of  the  two  sections.  All  of  this  feeling  was 
intensified  a  hundred-fold  by  the  assassination  of  Lincoln. 
Many  at  the  North  who  had  talked  before  of  " securities" 
began  to  insist  upon  "punishment"  and  revenge. 

To  the  Southern  gentleman,  who  had  governed  the  Con 
federacy  before  and  during  the  War,  there  was  also  a  logic 
of  facts.  For  whatever  reason,  justly  or  unjustly,  his  estates 
were  ruined  and  his  fortune  gone;  he  saw  his  friends  in  the 
same  condition;  he  saw  Northern  soldiers  quartered  on  the 
poverty-stricken  and  exhausted  country  and  knew  that,  what 
ever  legal  excuse  was  offered,  they  were  "conquerors"  and 
held  him  and  his  in  "subjection."  There  was  too  the  un 
doubted  existence  of  the  negro  and  the  poor  white,  whom 


THE  RESULTS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR  389 

he  had  despised  and  ruled;  the  War  had  raised  the  negro 
to  the  level  of  the  poor  white  and  had  brought  the  old 
aristocracy  down  to  the  level  of  both.  It  seemed  almost  too 
much  to  bear  that  at  this  same  time  the  North  should  be 
prosperous  and  reveling  in  luxury.  At  both  North  and 
South,  the  more  sober  and  better  informed  men  were  anxious 
to  return  to  amity  and  peace  and  to  deal  with  one  another 
like  brothers,  with  a  sympathetic  forbearance  on  the  one  hand 
of  taunts  about  the  past  and  an  eager  acceptance  on  the  other 
of  the  inevitable  changes.  It  was  perhaps  too  much  to  expect 
that  it  could  have  been  so.  Four  years  of  war  left  behind 
a  legacy  that  no  one  desired  but  of  which  none  could  rid 
himself. 


XXVI 
THE  ISSUE  OF  BE  CONSTRUCTION 

THE  Civil  War  grew  out  of  a  misunderstanding1  between 
honest  and  sincere  men.  So  did  the  Reconstruction.  Let 
us  not  deny  that  charity  to  the  Northern  Reconstructionists 
which  the  slave-holders  of  1850  have  received.  Even  the 
carpet-bagger  and  the  scalawag  had  convictions.  As  we  must 
renounce  the  idea  that  the  "War  was  caused  by  a  conspiracy 
of  Southern  planters  solely  to  extend  and  maintain  slavery, 
so  must  we  renounce  the  idea  that  the  North  intended  Re 
construction  to  humiliate  the  South.  Much  that  was  done 
was  unintentional,  the  result  of  the  disagreement  of 
honest  men  on  both  sides.  Indeed,  in  the  study  of  Recon 
struction,  there  is  scarcely  another  fact  so  conspicuous  as  the 
unexpected  turn  of  events.  The  whole  nation  was  groping 
around  a  problem  whose  real  lineaments  it  did  not  know, 
like  a  blind  man  making  his  way  about  in  an  unfamiliar  room. 
Reconstruction  was  an  attempt  to  settle  nearly  all  the  great 
issues  of  American  development,  whose  factors  had  been  so 
altered  by  the  War  as  to  produce  in  each  new  features  so 
radically  different  from  the  old  as  to  change  the  problem 
itself  beyond  recognition. 

Indeed,  we  are  dealing  with  the  construction  of  a  new 
nation,  not  with  the  reconstruction,  preservation,  alteration, 
or  restoration  of  the  status  quo  before  the  War.  The  North, 

i"I  think  very  much  of  the  ill  feeling  that  has  existed  and  still 
exists  between  the  people  in  the  section  from  which  I  came  and  the 
people  here  [Washington,  D.  C.]  is  dependent  upon  a  misunderstanding 
of  one  another."  Lincoln  in  reply  to  the  greeting  of  the  Mayor  of 
Washington,  D.  C.,  Feb.  27,  1861.  Nicolay  and  Hay,  Complete  Works, 
VI,  165. 

360 


THE  ISSUE  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  361 

the  South,  the  Union,  the  Constitution,  the  States,  the  Senate, 
the  House,  the  Presidency,  the  people  had  all  been  so  vitally 
changed  that  the  readjustment  of  each  to  the  others  required 
literally  the  construction  of  a  new  social  and  constitutional 
fabric.  Nor  was  the  necessity  less  because  in  the  majority 
of  instances  the  constitutional  change  was  implicit  rather  than 
explicit;  to  be  read  into  old  phrases,  not  formally  expressed; 
a  difference  to  be  applied  in  living  rather  than  to  be  recorded 
in  line  and  precept.  All  national  politics  and  institutions  were 
to  be  honestly  tested  for  the  first  time  by  the  concept  of  nation 
ality,  as  Lincoln  had  made  the  nation  conscious  of  it.  In 
all  social  and  economic  problems  at  the  South,  the  emancipation 
of  the  negro  by  proclamation  and  by  the  Thirteenth  Amend 
ment,  ratified  in  1865,  had  introduced  a  factor  entirely  un 
known  to  every  one.  The  political  and  economic  emancipation 
of  the  poor  white  by  the  actual  destruction  of  the  older  agri 
cultural  fabric  had  placed  in  the  numerical  majority  in  the 
South  a  class  which  hated  the  old  planter  class  and  the  negro 
alike  with  vehemence. 

Scarcely  less  important  was  the  alteration  in  the  relative 
prominence  and  authority  of  the  executive  as  compared  to  the 
legislature.  The  exigencies  of  the  War  had  compelled  the  use 
by  Lincoln  of  extraordinary  powers,  which  had  been  viewed 
with  suspicion  and  downright  hostility  by  Congress  and  by 
many  individuals,  and  whose  use  had  by  the  logic  of  facts 
completely  reversed  the  traditional  position  of  executive  and 
legislature,  robbing  the  latter  of  its  preeminence  and  initiative. 
Nothing  could  have  been  predicted  with  greater  certainty  than 
that  the  close  of  the  War  and  the  consequent  cessation  of  the 
imperative  necessary  for  the  recognition  of  executive  discre 
tion  would  father  a  determined  attempt  by  Congress  to  deprive 
the  executive  of  his  new  authority  and  to  reassert  once  more 
the  legislative  supremacy.  Without  doubt,  the  doctrine  of 
nationality  abrogated  the  older  concept  of  the  State,  as  well 
North  as  South,  and  introduced  in  practice  the  theoretical 
notion  of  the  paramount  authority  of  the  Federal  government 
over  the  individual  citizen  as  superior  in  obligation  to  that  of 


362  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

his  State.  Whatever  currency  this  idea  had  previously  ob 
tained,  it  had  certainly  never  before  been  a  precept  upon 
which  the  actual  working  of  the  Federal  system  had  been 
based  and  the  close  of  the  War  clearly  raised  a  series  of  most 
important  practical  issues  which  were  to  be  adjudicated  by  the 
courts  in  the  light  of  this  new  national  reading  of  the  Consti 
tution.  A  difference  of  opinion  with  the  States,  so  recently 
members  of  the  Confederacy,  was  highly  probable,  and  logic 
and  precedent  for  several  views  of  their  status,  past  and 
present,  were  not  long  in  appearing.  In  the  guise  of  the 
payment  of  the  Federal  debt,  and  of  the  provision  of  a  sound 
currency  to  replace  the  paper  money  adopted  as  an  expedient 
during  the  War,  rose  all  the  old  formidable  financial  issues — 
America's  dependence  on  Europe,  the  necessity  for  a  medium 
of  exchange,  the  dependence  of  the  South  and  West  upon  the 
commercial  cities  on  the  Atlantic  coast,  the  necessity  of  dis 
tributing  the  specie  evenly  throughout  the  community  and  of 
the  prevention  of  hoarding  it.  All  of  these  vital  factors  re 
acted  upon  each  other  again  and  again  and  complicated  still 
further  a  problem  already  difficult  in  the  extreme.  The  con 
struction  of  a  new  South  in  harmony  with  the  new  notions 
of  nationality  and  democracy  involved  sweeping  and  significant 
changes  in  industry,  in  legislation,  in  substantive  law,  in  ad 
ministration,  in  social  life  which  certainly  could  not  be  com 
pleted  without  tremendous  difficulty  and  without  suffering  to 
many  and  many  an  innocent  individual. 

In  studying  this  "  great  confusion,  officially  styled  the  Re 
construction  of  the  Southern  States, "  2  it  is  absolutely  essential 
to  read  political  and  social  movements  in  the  light  of  the  War. 
A  situation,  itself  complex  in  the  extreme,  was  tangled  almost 
beyond  the  possibility  of  belief,  by  the  actual  conditions  in 
the  South  and  in  Washington. 

The  presence  of  the  Northern  armies  constantly  reminded 
the  Southerners  that  the  new  settlement  was  really  being  im 
posed  upon  them  by  the  North,  whatever  legal  or  ethical 
grounds  might  be  alleged  in  an  endeavor  to  conceal  the  un- 

2  W.  G.  Brown  in  Atlantic  Monthly,  May  1901,  Vol.  LXXXVII,  634. 


THE  ISSUE  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  363 

concealable.  The  only  too  evident  ruin  of  all  the  wealthy, 
the  certainty  that  the  poor  whites  and  negroes  would  be  able 
to  adjust  themselves  to  the  conditions  of  democratic  freedom 
only  slowly  and  painfully,  the  inevitable  bitterness  and  rancor 
among  the  old  planters  at  seeing  themselves  ''degraded"  to 
the  level  of  the  poor  white  and  of  the  negro;  the  latter 's 
equally  inevitable  elation,  only  too  sure  of  blatant  expression, 
at  his  elevation  to  an  equality  with  the  oligarchy,  were  all  un 
fortunately  insistent  elements.  The  Southerners  had  embraced 
with  real  fervor  and  enthusiasm  the  new  concept  of  nationality 
and  had  no  intention  of  relinquishing  it  but  were  somewhat 
shaken  in  their  belief  that  all  would  now  be  well  by  the 
discovery  that  the  new  nationality  was  bound  tightly  to  a  new 
concept  of  democracy  which  included  the  negro.  That  the 
United  States  should  be  one,  they  could  believe  expedient ;  but 
that  the  negro  was  industrially,  legally,  politically,  socially 
the  equal  of  the  white  man,  they  could  not  credit.  This  was 
a  plain  issue  of  fact  and  the  evidence  of  their  senses  as 
well  as  the  traditions  of  two  centuries  and  a  half  forbade 
their  accepting  such  a  dictum  without  clear  proof  of  its 
verity.  The  War  had  honestly  made  the  North  and  South 
nationalists;  but  it  was  powerless  to  remodel,  in  a  moment 
as  it  were,  their  social,  moral,  and  ethical  standards.  The 
negro  was  no  different  after  the  War  from  what  he  had  been 
before ;  if  anything,  he  was  less  capable,  less  industrious,  less 
honest,  less  moral;  and  he  was  surely  not  to  be  endowed 
with  ability,  education,  and  energy  by  making  speeches  in  the 
Senate  or  by  passing  constitutional  amendments.  The  logic  of 
the  situation  was  stronger  than  theory:  the  Southerners  who 
had  always  known  the  negro  saw  that  he  could  not  be  other 
wise  than  he  was ;  the  Northerners,  who  had  never  known  the 
negro  at  all,  were  able  to  believe  honestly  that  the  striking 
off  of  his  shackles  would  as  suddenly  reveal  hitherto  unexpected 
qualities  and  his  possession  of  the  common  heritage  of  hu 
manity.  To  the  Southerner,  fundamental  racial  and  economic 
facts  stood  in  the  way  of  the  negro's  actual  freedom  and 
equality;  to  many  excited  Northerners,  only  the  artificial  re- 


364  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

straints  of  laws  and  constitutions  had  hidden  the  facts  which 
had  always  existed,  and  which  needed  now  merely  to  be  made 
apparent.  Here  again  was  a  clash  of  opinion  certain  to  affect 
vitally  the  attitude  of  all  parties  and  individuals  to  the  new 
settlement. 

Most  apparent  and  important  of  all,  the  men  in  control 
at  Washington  naturally  regarded  as  a  national  calamity  the 
bare  suggestion  that  they  were  not  to  direct  the  creation  of 
the  new  national  fabric,  the  hint  that  they  were  not  the  men 
best  qualified  to  undertake  it.  Had  not  their  winning  of  the 
War  proved  it?  Should  the  results  of  the  War  be  lost  by 
taking  the  control  of  the  settlement  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
friends  of  freedom?  Indeed,  it  was  difficult  for  them  to  be 
lieve  that  the  opinions  of  Northern  men  who  had  opposed  the 
War  or  criticized  its  conduct,  of  Southern  men  who  had  fought 
in  the  Confederate  army,  had  any  right  to  consideration  upon 
the  problems  which  the  War  had  bequeathed,  could  be  other 
wise  than  inharmonious  with  the  splendid  principles  upon 
which  the  War  had  been  fought  and  won.  It  was  clear  that 
the  most  vital  issues  concerned  the  interpretation  of  the  Consti 
tution  and  statutes  in  the  light  of  the  new  concepts,  involved 
the  passage  of  new  legislation  conceived  in  their  spirit,  and 
that  all  could  be  easily  invalidated  and  the  result  of  the  War 
destroyed  by  hostile  or  unsympathetic  interpretations.  Thus 
was  promptly  injected  into  issues  already  too  complex,  the 
question  of  the  balance  of  parties  at  the  North,  the  personal 
reputation  and  reward  of  the  men  who  had  won  the  War, 
the  importance  of  the  army  as  a  factor  in  politics  at  the 
polls  and  elsewhere,  and  the  influence,  interrelation,  and  in 
teraction  of  all  these  upon  each  other  and  upon  the  old 
quarrels  of  the  executive  and  legislature,  of  North  and  South, 
of  the  States  and  the  Federal  government. 

The  reorganization  of  the  South  was  certain  at  best  to 
cause  suffering  to  many  individuals,  and  required  forbearance 
and  consideration  from  the  North.  The  actual  conditions  at 
the  South  and  at  Washington  rendered  almost  inevitable 
mutual  misunderstandings  which  could  not  fail  greatly  to 


THE  ISSUE  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  365 

increase  the  sum  total  of  suffering  at  the  South  and  strain 
almost  to  the  breaking-point  the  new  national  bond  which 
the  fighting  of  four  years  had  been  needed  to  create.  The 
manner  in  which  Reconstruction  was  undertaken  became  a 
new  obstacle  in  the  way  of  the  realization  of  nationality. 
To  make  it  a  permanent  obstacle,  the  men  who  had  won  the 
War  seem  to  have  unconsciously  done  their  best;  that  it 
caused  only  temporary  difficulty,  was  due  to  the  forbearance, 
the  splendid  patriotism,  and  the  statesmanship  of  the  North 
ern  conservatives  who  had  opposed  the  War  and  of  the 
Southern  men  once  enrolled  under  the  Stars  and  Bars.  We 
should  never  forget  that  if  the  War  was  won  by  a  part 
of  the  nation  to  create  nationality,  the  nation  as  it  now 
stands  is  nearly  as  much  the  work  of  those  who  loyally 
accepted  the  true  results  of  the  War  after  it  was  over  and 
who  narrowly  managed  to  prevent  the  destruction  of  the 
new  nation  at  the  hands  of  its  friends  as  soon  as  it  had 
been  created.  The  South  as  well  as  the  North,  the  Recon 
struction  as  well  as  the  War,  played  a  vital  part  in  making 
us  one  people,  bone  of  our  bone,  flesh  of  our  flesh. 

As  was  inevitable,  an  issue  of  so  many  sides  and  significant 
aspects,  none  of  which  in  any  sense  were  mutually  exclusive, 
none  of  which  could  by  any  possibility  be  settled  except  in 
relation  to  the  rest,  presented  for  that  very  reason,  even  to 
the  honest  and  energetic,  one  aspect  so  much  more  vital  in 
its  effect  on  their  personal  predilections,  ideals,  and  ambitions 
that  it  stood  in  their  minds  for  the  whole  complex  tangle 
of  needs  and  desirabilities.  The  issue  of  Reconstruction  was 
neither  political,  constitutional,  legal,  social,  ethical,  nor  eco 
nomic,  but  an  extraordinarily  complicated  network  created 
by  the  interrelation  and  interaction  of  all.  The  first  criminal 
error  committed,  therefore,  in  all  honesty  and  good  faith, 
was  the  attempt  to  deal  with  it  from  only  one  point  of 
view.  Presidential  Reconstruction  assumed  that  the  question 
was  legal  and  formal,  to  be  decided  by  the  constitutional 
theories  upon  which  the  War  had  been  fought.  Congress 
promptly  saw  that  there  were  political  questions  of  the  utmost 


366  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

consequence  involved  and  that  the  South  would  be  hard  pressed 
to  deal  alone  with  the  numerous  temporary  difficulties  grow 
ing  out  of  the  conditions  actually  in  existence.  The  social 
reformers  soon  appreciated  that  the  presidential  plan  really 
left  the  South  nearly  complete  discretion  in  the  rebuilding 
of  the  economic  and  social  fabric  and  they  instantly  objected 
to  such  a  "  sacrifice  "  of  the  negro.  To  them,  the  transcendent 
issue  was  social  and  ethical,  the  negroes  the  most  important 
class  of  the  community  to  be  protected  and  assisted  over  the 
transition  from  bondage  to  freedom.  Each  of  these  plans 
was  based  upon  an  important  element  in  the  situation;  each 
committed  the  pardonable  blunder  of  assuming  that  element 
to  be  the  only  issue  of  real  consequence.  None,  therefore, 
met  the  prerequisite  of  statesmanship, — the  open  recognition 
that  the  problems  were  interrelated  and  must  be  solved  to 
gether  with  due  regard  for  each  other.  All  three  remedies 
were  applied  in  succession,  and  as  each  left  unsolved  impor 
tant  problems,  another  sovereign  emollient  was  brought  for 
ward.  The  result  was  almost  indescribable  confusion  and 
the  intensification  and  prolongation  of  the  natural  difficulties 
of  adjustment  at  the  South,  and  the  trebling  of  suffering 
for  many  individuals. 

The  greatest  trouble  of  all  rose  out  of  a  misunderstand 
ing.  During  the  War,  Lincoln  had  announced  a  theory  of 
executive  "reconstruction"  of  the  seceded  States  which  he 
applied  before  the  end  of  the  War  to  those  States  in  the 
hands  of  the  Union  armies.  He  assumed  that  secession  was 
unconstitutional;  no  State  could  "get  out  of  the  Union;"  no 
State  had  ever  been  a  State  at  all  "out  of  the  Union;"  and 
the  mere  fact  that  the  Southern  States  had  attempted  to 
secede  upon  this  mistaken  theory  had  not  in  the  least  altered 
their  constitutional  status.  The  Southern  States  were  still 
members  of  the  Union,  and  the  process  of  their  reinstate 
ment  would  therefore  be  simple  in  the  extreme.  So  soon  as 
the  President  was  assured  that  a  loyal  State  government  was 
peaceably  performing  the  usual  civil  functions,  he  should  by 
proclamation  make  that  fact  known  to  the  country  and  to 


THE  ISSUE  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  3fl7 

Congress,  and  thus  by  an  executive  announcement  of  the  actual 
fact,  the  State  would  once  more  take  its  place  among  its 
sisters.  No  "reconstruction"  would  be  necessary,  for  there 
had  been  no  legal  breach  of  the  constitutional  fabric;  the 
States  would  merely  recommence  their  old  life  and  the  Presi 
dent  should  announce  the  moment  when  it  began.  Naturally, 
the  President  should  exercise  his  discretion  in  deciding  what 
tests  should  indicate  its  beginning. 

This  theory  was  certainly  that  on  which  the  War  had  been 
fought  and  that  approved  by  all  parties  at  Washington  during 
the  first  years  of  its  continuance.  The  Democratic  slogan 
had  even  been  "Restore  the  Union  as  it  was."  On  the 
whole,  the  terms  proposed  by  the  Federal  government  in  the 
various  abortive  negotiations  with  the  Confederacy  had  in  view 
the  "restoration"  of  the  Federal  bond  as  the  North  understood 
it.  Lincoln  recognized  Tennessee  and  Louisiana  as  States  in 
1864,  and,  though  a  clash  of  opinion  between  the  President 
and  Congress  was  already  apparent  before  Lincoln's  death, 
Johnson  continued  his  policy.  The  measures  he  prescribed  in 
May  1865,  were  of  the  simplest.  A  proclamation  offered 
amnesty  to  all  taking  an  oath  of  future  loyalty  to  the  United 
States,  and  the  prominent  Confederates,  who  were  excepted 
from  the  amnesty  by  classes,  were  to  be  pardoned  by  the  Presi 
dent  when  they  had  taken  the  oath  and  petitioned  for  ex 
ecutive  clemency.  The  President  next  appointed  provisional 
governors  in  the  various  Southern  States,  who  caused  an 
election  of  delegates  to  a  constitutional  convention  by  such 
of  the  electorate  qualified  to  vote  at  the  date  of  secession  as  had 
already  taken  the  oath  of  loyalty.  By  proclamations  the 
civil  departments  of  the  Federal  government  once  more  began 
the  execution  of  the  Federal  laws  in  the  several  States.  When 
Congress  met  in  December,  all  the  Southern  States  had  in 
pursuance  of  this  plan  repealed  the  ordinances  of  secession, 
had  adopted  new  constitutions  abolishing  slavery,  and,  with 
two  exceptions,  had  repudiated  the  war  debt  of  the  Confeder 
acy.  The  legislatures  had  met,  the  executive  officers  had  taken 
their  seats,  the  Federal  officers  were  executing  the  United 


368  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

States  statutes.  United  States  senators  and  representatives 
had  been  chosen,  and,  with  two  exceptions,  all  had  adopted 
the  Thirteenth  Amendment  abolishing  slavery.  In  view  of 
these  facts,  the  President  had  by  proclamation  declared  the 
cessation  of  armed  resistance,  the  restoration  of  intercourse, 
and  the  end  of  the  blockade.  The  troops  had  not  been  with 
drawn  nor  the  right  to  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus  restored, 
but,  in  his  message  to  Congress  of  December  1865,  Johnson 
made  it  clear  that,  in  his  opinion,  nothing  remained  to  be  done 
to  complete  the  process  of  restoring  the  States  to  their  former 
places  but  the  acceptance  of  the  newly-elected  senators  and 
representatives  by  Congress. 


XXVII 

CONGRESSIONAL  RECONSTRUCTION:  ITS  CAUSES 
AND  ITS  METHODS 

To  the  Congressional  leaders,  the  issue  was  by  no  means  so 
simple.  They  saw  obvious  objections  on  political,  constitu 
tional,  and  social  grounds  to  any  recognition  of  the  presidential 
solution.  Their  overwhelmingly  important  objection  was  that 
the  process  was  entirely  executive  and  created  or  assumed 
powers  extending  an  executive  authority  already  too  large. 
Congress  had  always  been  jealous  of  the  President.  The 
enormous  accession  of  power  thrust  upon  him  by  the  War  had 
been  flatly  contrary  to  the  general  tradition  since  the  earliest 
Colonial  times  of  the  supremacy  of  the  legislature  over  the 
executive,  and  Congress  had  during  the  War  ill  concealed 
its  impatience  and  hostility.  While  the  crisis  actually  existed, 
it  was  felt  that  constitutional  scruples  should  be  pushed  to 
one  side ;  but  now  that  the  War  was  over  the  pent-up  wrath, 
suspicion,  hatred  which  had  accumulated  during  the  long  four 
years  burst  forth  over  Johnson's  demand  that  Congress  should 
tamely  accept  at  his  dictation  the  settlement  of  all  the  ques 
tions  bequeathed  by  the  War.  That  the  executive  should  have 
fought  and  won  the  War  galled  Congress  inexpressibly ;  that 
the  Presidency  had  drawn  from  the  War  and  from  Lincoln's 
personal  prestige  an  extraordinary  accession  of  power  and  an 
importance  as  compared  to  the  legislature  which  could  never 
be  entirely  regained,  the  angry  senators  and  representatives 
fully  appreciated.  But  that  the  executive  should  already  have 
issued  his  fiat  upon  the  results  of  the  War,  should  not  have 
consulted  them  even  as  a  formal  courtesy  as  to  the  proper 
course  to  be  pursued  in  the  numerous  constitutional  difficulties 
involved,  was  more  than  the  men  who  had  repressed  their 

369 


370  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

hatred  so  long  could  have  been  expected  to  bear.  They  viewed 
all  of  Johnson's  acts  and  decisions  with  supercilious  suspicion, 
simply  and  solely  because  they  were  executive  acts.  Of  the 
facts  of  the  situation  at  the  South,  of  the  probable  consequences 
of  a  quarrel  between  Executive  and  Congress,  they  recked 
little.  To  them,  the  whole  structure  of  the  Federal  Constitu 
tion,  which  the  North  had  fought  the  War  to  preserve,  was 
being  destroyed  by  the  usurpations  of  the  executive.  States' 
rights  was  a  specter;  presidential  domination  of  Federal  poli 
cies  and  means  was  stalking  abroad  as  a  giant  whose  head 
topped  the  clouds.  Lincoln  had  taught  Congress  only  too 
well  that  the  legislative  power  could  deal  only  with  new 
policies,  and  now  if  this  greatest  subject  for  new  legislation, 
the  results  of  the  War,  could  thus  coolly  be  dealt  with  by 
Johnson  by  proclamation  and  fiat,  the  President  could  literally 
usurp  by  a  similar  process  of  interpretation  all  the  functions 
of  Congress  and  reduce  that  body  to  a  nonentity.  The  mem 
bers  of  the  House  felt  themselves  called  to  be  the  saviors  of 
the  country  from  a  new  and  greater  peril  than  States'  rights 
and  slavery.  With  them  agreed  thousands  both  North  and 
South  who  had  been  alienated  and  disgusted  by  what  they 
considered  the  arbitrary  and  unconstitutional  acts  of  Lincoln 
and  Davis,  and  who  had  impatiently  awaited  the  end  of  the 
War  as  a  time  when  such  " usurpations"  would  certainly  cease. 
The  strength  and  intensity  of  the  determination  to  put  an  end 
to  the  extension  of  executive  authority  is  a  chief  factor  in  the 
drama  of  Reconstruction,  and  in  Washington  it  almost  cer 
tainly  dwarfed  all  others. 

The  other  objection  to  the  presidential  theory  was  its  fail 
ure  to  take  into  account  the  actual  situation  at  the  South.  It 
was  all  very  well  to  declare  that  the  States  were  what  they 
had  been,  but  the  actual  facts  contradicted  the  theory;  the 
Southern  States  had  been  actually  out  of  the  Union  for  four 
years ;  *  the  civil  administration,  the  economic  and  social 

1  In  a  Eulogy  on  Lincoln  delivered  by  Sumner  in  Boston  in  1865, 
he  took  issue  squarely  with  the  presidential  plans.  "There  can  be  no 
question  here  whether  a  State  is  in  the  Union  or  out  of  it.  This  is  but 


CONGRESSIONAL  RECONSTRUCTION  371 

structure  had  been  literally  destroyed  by  the  War,  and  new 
State  governments  upon  a  new  national  and  democratic  basis 
were  to  be  set  up.  Furthermore,  it  was  entirely  clear  that 
the  roving  negroes  and  rascally  thieves  then  thronging  many 
parts  of  the  South  were  not  to  be  successfully  restrained  by 
the  sort  of  loosely-organized  civil  government  which  had 
formerly  existed  there.  Excited  orators  denounced  Johnson 
for  closing  his  eyes  to  the  obvious  facts  of  the  situation,  and, 
to  their  logic  and  reasoning,  the  Northern  interpretation  of 
the  Southern  efforts  to  grapple  with  the  most  imperative  prob 
lems  lent  only  too  much  color.  Johnson  had  handed  over  to 
the  men,  who  had  seceded  to  preserve  slavery,  discretion  to 
deal  with  the  freedmen,  and  they  had  used  it  as  he  should 
have  anticipated. 

Needless  to  add,  the  excited  enemies  of  the  President  in 
Washington  and  throughout  the  North  had  only  a  faint 
adumbration  of  the  practical  difficulties  of  the  negro  problem 
at  the  South,  and,  with  the  almost  universal  exaggeration  of 
the  negro 's  capacity,  virtue,  and  honesty  then  prevalent,  they 
quite  inevitably  misinterpreted  the  experiments  the  South 
erners  based  upon  the  practical  difficulties  whose  very  ex 
istence  the  glorification  of  the  negro  forbade  the  North  to 
credit.  The  Emancipation  Proclamation  of  1862  and  the 
Thirteenth  Amendment  did  not  contemplate  the  need  of  in 
struction  to  the  negroes  concerning  the  use  of  their  new  free 
dom.  It  was,  indeed,  inconceivable  to  the  enthusiasts  that  a 
man  should  not  know  what  to  do  with  freedom,  should  be  in 
capable  of  applying  freedom  to  the  problems  of  life  as  he  him 
self  had  to  live  it.  There  was  no  insurrection  or  universal  out 
break  of  anarchy  and  bloodshed  as  the  ante-bellum  slavery  ad 
vocates  had  predicted;  but  the  millennium  of  freedom  antici 
pated  by  the  anti-slavery  men  was  patently  unrealized. 
Many  negroes,  especially  the  house  servants,  remained  with 
their  old  masters,  faithful,  loyal,  contented;  but  thousands 

a  phrase  on  which  discussion  is  useless.  Look  at  the  actual  fact.  Here 
all  will  agree.  The  old  governments  are  vacated,  and  this  is  enough." 
Charles  Sumner,  Eulogy  on  Lincoln,  59.  Boston,  1865. 


372  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

had  enlisted  in  the  Union  armies,  or  had  followed  as  laborers, 
digging  in  the  trenches  or  driving  baggage  wagons,  and  were 
now  stranded  by  the  cessation  of  the  War.  Many  thousands 
had  left  the  interior  of  the  cotton  States,  as  food  grew  scarce, 
or  had  wandered  around  merely  to  find  out  whether  they 
could,  and  had  congregated  along  the  rivers  where  the  Fed 
eral  government  had  attempted  to  feed  them  in  contraband 
camps  controlled  by  the  army.  These  roving  thousands  had 
somehow  to  be  provided  for  and  it  was  perfectly  patent  to 
any  one  in  contact  with  them  that,  as  long  as  the  government 
would  feed  them,  they  had  no  intention  of  working.  Other 
crowds  like  them  clustered  in  the  cities  and  towns,  restless, 
lazy,  shiftless,  committing  freely  innumerable  minor  crimes,  a 
constant  menace  to  the  peace  of  the  community.  On  the 
plantations,  petty  crimes  and  thieving  had  been  personal  of 
fenses  against  the  master  only  and  were  still  to  the  negroes 
not  offenses  against  any  law  involving  trials  in  courts.  The 
removal  of  the  master's  authority  left  them  almost  uncon 
trolled  by  any  legislation  then  in  force.  To  control  their 
criminal  propensities  was  essential,  but  to  force  them  to  do 
enough  work  to  support  themselves  and  relieve  the  white  com 
munity  of  the  hardship  of  doing  the  work  necessary  to  sup 
port  everybody,  was  the  very  first  and  most  important  step 
in  the  economic  construction  of  a  new  South.  The  chief 
source  of  labor  for  growing  the  only  commodity  of  value  had 
not  only  ceased  to  be  available  in  the  cotton  fields,  but  had 
become  an  overwhelming  economic  burden.  That  the  bulk 
of  the  negroes  had  not  the  slightest  intention  of  working  was 
evident;  that  it  would  ruin  the  South  beyond  repair  to  be 
forced  to  feed  between  two  and  three  million  mouths  from  the 
labor  of  the  whites  and  a  million  or  so  of  blacks  was  eminently 
clear. 

The  Federal  government  had  seen  the  difficulty  and  had 
created  the  Freedman's  Bureau  in  March  1865,  to  care  for 
the  blacks  and  their  interests,  to  shield  them  from  the  specu 
lators  and  sharpers,  white  and  black,  already  imposing  on 
their  inexperience,  and  to  allot  to  them  the  abandoned  planta- 


CONGRESSIONAL  RECONSTRUCTION  373 

tions  and  furnish  enough  tools  and  seeds  to  start  them  on  the 
new  life.  To  facilitate  the  work,  jurisdiction  was  given  the 
Bureau  over  all  controversies  to  which  a  negro  was  a  party, 
including  family  relations  and  marriage.  In  particular,  the 
Bureau  was  to  take  cognizance  of  all  the  means  and  methods 
by  which  the  whites  sought  to  secure  the  labor  of  the  freed- 
men  and  was  to  guarantee  them  against  contracts  which  should 
be  the  equivalent  of  slavery  for  life.  Most  of  the  appointees 
of  the  Bureau  were  military  officers  who  worked  in  conjunc 
tion  with  the  army  in  the  district.  To  the  Southerners,  the 
Bureau  was  a  diabolical  device  to  perpetuate  the  military  con 
trol  of  the  South  and  humiliate  the  whites  before  the  negro, 
a  method  of  compelling  by  force  recognition  of  the  social 
equality  with  the  blacks  which  the  whites  were  determined 
not  to  concede. 

The  resentment  and  reaction  at  the  South  caused  the  inser 
tion  of  clauses  in  the  new  constitutions  denying  with  vehe 
mence  the  equality  of  the  white  and  black  races  and  affirming 
that  negroes  could  not  be  citizens  of  the  United  States.  To 
coerce  the  negroes  into  working,  ''vagrancy'*  acts  were  passed 
in  several  States  in  the  fall  of  1865  which  declared  it  an  of 
fense  for  negroes  over  eighteen  years  old  to  be  without  ''law 
ful  employment  or  business"  or  to  be  found  "unlawfully  as 
sembling  themselves  together  either  in  the  day  or  night  time." 
For  this  offense  the  negro  was  to  be  fined  $50,  and,  if  he  should 
not  pay  his  fine  within  five  days,  he  should  be  hired  out  by 
the  sheriff  to  the  man  who  would  pay  the  fine  and  costs,  in  re 
turn  for  the  shortest  period  of  service,  preference  being  given 
to  the  negro's  previous  "employer."  Negroes  under  eighteen 
years  of  age,  "orphans  or  the  children  of  parents  who  could 
not  or  would  not  support  them,"  were  to  be  apprenticed  until 
twenty-one  years  old  by  the  Clerk  of  the  Probate  Court  at  his 
discretion,  preferably  to  the  former  owner.  Mississippi  made 
a  similar  provision  for  negroes  who  did  not  pay  their  taxes 
and  then  levied  a  poll  tax  of  $1  a  head  on  all  negroes  "for 
the  support  of  the  poor."  The  criminal  statutes  provided 
fines  and  compulsory  work  to  be  done  by  the  criminal  for 


374  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

the  man  who  would  pay  the  fine  in  return  for  the  shortest 
period  of  service  in  such  elastic  offenses  as  "malicious  mis 
chief,"  "insulting  gestures,"  "seditious  speeches,"  or  "any 
other  misdemeanor." 

Granting  that  these  acts  were  necessary  to  replace  the 
negro  in  the  economic  fabric  and  secure  his  cooperation  in 
supporting  the  community  of  which  he  was  now  a  citizen, 
they  were  certain  to  create  the  impression  in  the  North  that 
the  Southerners  intended  to  restore  actual  slavery  under  the 
guise  of  apprenticeship  or  as  a  punishment  for  debt  or  crime, 
and,  to  hasten  and  facilitate  the  completion  of  the  process, 
had  put  acts  on  the  statute-book  defining  vagrancy  and  crime 
in  broad  and  inclusive  terms  which  ipso  facto  made  every 
negro  guilty.  They  had  provided  compulsory  work  for 
negroes  in  debt  and  had  then  passed  laws  which  instantly  put 
every  negro  into  debt.  Nor  could  the  constant  reference  to 
his  "former  employer"  or  owner  as  the  fittest  person  to  be 
come  his  guardian  or  jailor  fail  to  lend  verisimilitude  to  all 
these  charges  of  a  revival  of  slavery. 

Such  statutes  seemed  to  Congress  evidence  that  the  spirit 
in  which  the  South  proposed  to  interpret  the  Thirteenth 
Amendment  was  by  no  means  that  in  which  it  had  been 
passed.  To  this  unfortunate  misunderstanding,  fuel  was 
added  by  the  election  of  men,  who  had  been  especially  promi 
nent  in  the  administrative  and  military  service  of  the  Confed 
eracy  to  be  senators  and  representatives  of  the  United  States 
from  the  new  State  governments  reconstructed  by  the  Presi 
dent.  If  such  men  could  at  once  return  to  Congress  to  be 
gin  over  again  the  old  debates,  why  had  the  War  been  fought  ? 
Could  the  North  ask  less  recognition  of  the  defeat  of  the  Con 
federacy,  demand  less  evidence  of  an  honest  intention  to  ac 
cept  the  result,  than  the  choice  by  the  Southerners  of  senators 
and  representatives  for  the  national  councils  who  had  not  been 
connected  with  the  "rebellion"?  The  reply,  that  nearly 
every  man  of  ability  or  character  had  been  in  some  way  identi 
fied  with  the  Confederacy  and  that  their  disqualification  would 
deprive  the  South  of  the  services  of  its  natural  leaders,  did 


CONGRESSIONAL  RECONSTRUCTION  375 

not  seem  to  the  North  really  valid.  Stephens,  Brown,  and 
their  ilk  again  in  Washington !  This  was  surely  defiance. 

Moreover,  with  some  astonishment,  many  Northern  men 
learned  that  the  South  would  now  be  proportionately  stronger 
in  the  House  of  Representatives  than  ever  before.  The  adop 
tion  of  the  Thirteenth  Amendment  had  changed  the  basis  of 
representation  from  the  whites  plus  three-fifths  of  the  negroes 
to  the  whites  plus  all  the  negroes.  The  South  was  entitled  to 
more  votes  in  Congress,  and  these  would  certainly  be  thrown 
against  the  Republicans  and  in  favor  of  the  Northern  Demo 
crats,  who  had  already  so  large  a  minority  that  the  addition 
of  the  increased  Southern  vote  might  give  them  a  majority. 
Already  the  vivid  fears  of  the  Republicans  saw  the  men  who 
had  won  the  War  ousted  from  office;  the  men  who  had  op 
posed  the  War,  North  and  South,  in  control  of  the  national 
government ;  the  War  debt  of  the  North  repudiated  and  that 
of  the  Confederacy  paid;  the  negro  enslaved  once  more;  the 
results  of  the  War  entirely  lost.  Why  should  the  War  have 
ever  been  fought  if  the  men  who  had  won  it  were  thus  supinely 
to  allow  its  results  to  be  evaded?  Before  the  white  South 
should  be  allowed  to  elect  representatives  to  Congress  for  the 
negroes,  the  suffrage  must  be  extended  at  the  South  to  in 
clude  the  negroes,  who  would  of  course  vote  for  Republican 
representatives. 

In  addition,  came  the  news  that  the  uneasiness  and  fear  of 
the  Southern  whites  at  the  presence  of  such  large  numbers 
of  negroes,  insufficiently  restrained  from  the  commission  of 
crime  by  the  scattered  Federal  troopers,  had  resulted  in  the 
formation  of  State  militia  by  the  new  Southern  governments, 
in  whose  ranks  wore  naturally  to  be  found  a  large  proportion 
of  Confederate  veterans.  Was  this  not  clearest  evidence  of 
all,  insisted  the  excited  Northerners,  of  an  intention  to  reim- 
pose  slavery  by  force  and  to  protect  the  South  from  the 
natural  ire  of  the  North  at  this  evasion  of  the  War  legisla 
tion?  Lee's  army  enrolled  again  under  the  guise  of  State 
militia !  The  Confederate  Vice-President  again  in  Congress ! 
The  negroes  serving  out  by  forced  labor  sentences  for  crimes 


376  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

which  their  very  existence  compelled  them  to  commit!  "To 
my  mind,"  declared  Sumner  of  Massachusetts,  "it  abandons 
the  freedmen  to  the  control  of  their  ancient  masters  and  leaves 
the  national  debt  exposed  to  repudiation  by  returning  rebels. " 
"We  tell  the  white  men  of  Mississippi,"  vociferated  the 
Chicago  Tribune,  "that  the  men  of  the  North  will  convert  the 
state  of  Mississippi  into  a  frog-pond  before  they  will  allow 
any  such  laws  to  disgrace  one  foot  of  soil  over  which  the  flag 
of  freedom  flies. ' y  At  Washington,  the  sentiment  was  general 
that  the  political  reorganization  of  the  old  States  ought  to  be 
postponed  until  the  continued  ascendency  of  the  Republican 
Party  could  be  assured.  For  such  purposes  and  in  such  a 
spirit  was  Congressional  Reconstruction  undertaken. 

The  first  measures  passed  were  intended  to  increase  the 
power  of  the  Freedman's  Bureau  to  protect  the  negro  and 
ensure  him  equality  of  civil  rights.  Johnson  vetoed  the  acts 
and,  on  the  failure  of  Congress  to  repass  one  of  them  over  his 
veto,  exulted  openly  over  his  victory,  declaring  that  the  leaders 
in  Congress  were  striving  as  hard  to  undermine  the  principles 
of  the  Constitution  as  had  the  Confederates.  The  Northern 
Democrats  and  the  whites  at  the  South  promptly  and  not  un 
reasonably  concluded  that  the  President  and  the  administra 
tion  at  Washington  were  on  their  side  and  consequently  were 
encouraged  to  go  further  than  they  otherwise  would  have.  At 
the  same  time,  Congress  discovered  an  ally  in  Stanton,  the 
Secretary  of  War.  He  was  of  course  ex  officio  in  control  of 
the  army  in  the  South  and  of  the  Freedman's  Bureau,  of  the 
only  administrative  arms  of  the  Federal  government  which 
could  effectively  enforce  either  executive  or  legislative  de 
cisions.  With  his  assistance,  the  Congressional  leaders  hoped 
to  nullify  the  President's  orders  and  secure  the  adequate  en 
forcement  of  their  own. 

The  denunciation  of  the  Congressional  policy  as  unconsti 
tutional  set  the  leaders  at  once  to  work  in  the  spring  of  1866 
upon  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  which  was  to  settle  firmly 
and  decisively  the  results  of  the  War.  It  was  to  secure  to 
the  negro  full  equality  in  civil  rights  and  before  the  courts; 


CONGRESSIONAL  RECONSTRUCTION  377 

to  define  the  term  "citizen  of  the  United  States"  and  include 
the  negro ;  to  guarantee  the  payment  of  the  Federal  debt  and 
repudiate  the  Confederate  debt;  to  repudiate  forever  all 
claims  to  indemnification  for  loss  by  reason  of  the  emancipa 
tion  of  the  slaves ;  and  to  disqualify  all  Confederates  for  elec 
tion  to  Federal  office.  Above  all,  it  was  intended  to  prevent 
the  Southern  States,  when  reorganized,  from  taking  advan 
tage  of  the  increase  in  representation,  to  which  the  Thirteenth 
Amendment  entitled  them,  without  enfranchising  the  negro. 
The  "Federal  ratio,"  the  chief  compromise  of  1787,  had 
permitted  the  South  to  count  in  computing  its  population,  on 
which  direct  taxes  and  representation  were  to  be  apportioned, 
three-fifths  of  the  negroes.  The  whites  at  the  South  had  al 
ways,  therefore,  voted  for  a  part  of  the  negroes  as  well  as 
for  themselves.  The  new  amendment  provided,  as  finally 
passed,  that  the  population  of  each  state  for  representation 
should  be  decreased  in  proportion  to  the  number  of  male  in 
habitants,  '  *  being  twenty-one  years  of  age  and  citizens  of  the 
United  States,"  who  were  denied  the  suffrage.  Practically, 
this  deprived  the  Southern  States  of  the  partial  representa 
tion  of  the  negroes  they  had  had  and  gave  them  representa 
tion  only  for  those  male  inhabitants  over  twenty-one  who  were 
actually  allowed  to  vote.  The  language  of  the  amendment  ap 
plied  it  to  all  the  States  of  the  Union,  but  conditions  in  the 
North  made  it  of  no  consequence  there.  In  the  States  where 
the  negroes  equaled  or  outnumbered  the  whites,  the  effect  of 
the  amendment  was  materially  to  decrease  the  old  representa 
tion  of  the  State  in  the  House  of  Representatives  and  thus 
to  ensure  the  control  of  that  body  by  the  Republicans,  for  any 
increase  could  be  obtained  only  by  the  enfranchisement  of  the 
negroes,  who  could  be  depended  upon  to  vote  for  the  Republic 
ans.  "Loyalty  must  govern  what  loyalty  preserved"  became 
the  new  slogan.2 

2  The  phrase  was  coined  by  Colfax,  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Repre 
sentatives  during  the  War.  "If  it  be  said  that  the  colored  people  are 
unfit,  then  do  I  say  that  they  are  more  fit  than  their  recent  masters 
or  even  than  many  among  the  poor  whites.  They  have  been  loyal 


378  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

In  the  Congressional  Campaign  of  1866,  with  this  confusec 
jumble  of  issues,  the  Republicans  certainly  swept  the  coun 
try;  Johnson  was  clearly  unpopular  at  the  North;  and,  wher 
by  spring  all  the  Southern  States  had  rejected  the  Fourteenth 
Amendment  by  overwhelming  majorities,  Congress  felt  itsell 
thoroughly  justified  in  proceeding  with  the  plan  elaboratec 
by  the  Joint  Committee  on  Reconstruction  during  the  yeai 
1866. 

In  February  1867,  the  new  measure  was  passed  and  with 
out  doubt  was  brutal,  tyrannical,  foolish,  inexpedient,  un 
just,  and  probably  unconstitutional.  Admitting  that  then 
was  much  justification  for  hesitation  in  accepting  at  once  presi 
dential  reconstruction,  and  that  the  Southern  acts  were  no' 
unnaturally  misinterpreted  by  the  North,  it  is  still  impossibl< 
to  defend  the  method  by  which  Congress  proposed  to  re 
construct  the  South  on  any  other  basis  than  a  determinatior 
to  ensure  the  preponderance  of  the  Republican  Party  unde] 
all  conditions  for  at  least  a  generation,  and  to  humble  th< 
executive  and  render  Congress  supreme  in  the  Federal  gov 
ernment  at  all  costs.  Congress  had  found  fault  with  presi 
dential  reconstruction  because  it  failed  to  recognize  the  fad 
that  the  Southern  States  had  actually  been  out  of  the  Unior 
for  four  years,  and  it  now  proceeded  to  declare  that  those 
States  were  to  be  punished  for  seceding,  though  the  War  it 
self  had  been  fought  expressly  to  prove  that  no  State  could  bj 
any  legal  act  constitutionally  secede.  It  declared  them  liable 
to  a  penalty  for  doing  something  which  the  War  had  provec 
they  had  not  done.  The  preamble  spoke  of  the  ' l  rebel  States, ' 
though  they  were  patently  no  longer  in  rebellion  and  the  con 
tention  of  Congress  was  that  they  were  no  longer  States  a1 
all.  It  declared  the  absence  of  civil  government  and  the  ex 
istence  of  conditions  to  be  controlled  only  by  the  military  tc 
be  the  reasons  for  the  bill,  when  it  was  notorious  that  a  reason 
ably  efficient  civil  government  had  successfully  preserved  the 

always,  and  who  are  you,  that  under  any  pretence,  exalt  the  prejudices 
of  the  disloyal  above  the  rights  of  the  loyal?"  Charles  Sumner,  Eulogy 
on  Lincoln,  57.  Boston,  1865. 


CONGRESSIONAL  RECONSTRUCTION  379 

peace  and  administered  the  statutes  of  the  United  States  in  all 
the  Southern  States  since  the  summer  of  1865.  To  supply  this 
lack  of  civil  government  until  conditions  should  make  it  pos 
sible  to  restore  it,  the  act  created  five  military  districts,  to  be 
governed  by  martial  law  enforced  by  the  Federal  troops.  Any 
semblance  of  civil  government  which  might  be  in  existence 
was  to  be  utilized  or  not  by  the  general  in  command  of  the 
district  at  his  discretion.  These  districts  should  continue  un 
til  the  State  should  enfranchise  all  males  over  twenty-one  years 
old  without  regard  for  race,  color,  or  previous  condition  of 
servitude;  until  a  convention  should  be  elected  by  the  males 
not  disfranchised  for  participation  in  rebellion  or  for  crime, 
which  should  frame  a  constitution  in  conformity  with  the 
laws  of  the  United  States;  and  until  a  majority  of  the  elec 
torate,  voting  at  the  election,  had  accepted  the  constitution 
and  the  Fourteenth  Amendment.  When  the  constitution  had 
been  accepted  by  Congress  and  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  by 
three-fourths  of  the  other  States,  the  State  should  be  readmit 
ted  to  the  Union. 

To  this  measure,  were  joined  others  intended  to  prevent  the 
President  from  removing  executive  or  army  officers  loyal  to 
Congress  without  the  consent  of  the  Senate ;  to  force  Johnson 
as  commander-in-chief  of  the  army  to  issue  all  orders  to  the 
generals  in  command  of  the  military  districts  in  the  South 
only  through  the  general  of  the  army,  whom  Congress  be 
lieved  loyal  to  it,  and  who  was  not  to  be  removed  without  con 
sent  of  the  Senate.  Congress  then  passed  a  bill  calling  a  new 
session  of  Congress  for  March  4,  when  the  long  recess  would 
normally  have  left  the  President  supreme,  and  thus  perpetu 
ated  itself  in  office.  All  of  these  measures  Johnson  vetoed 
with  masterly  arguments,  and  all  were  derisively  passed  by 
huge  majorities  over  his  head. 

To  save  the  South  some  of  the  humiliation  and  suffering 
which  these  acts  involved,  Johnson  interpreted  them  in  the 
most  favorable  sense.  Congress,  to  insult  the  President, 
promptly  made  an  explicit  interpretation  to  the  opposite  ef 
fect  and  rendered  the  legislation  even  more  stringent.  At- 


380  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

tempts  to  examine  the  constitutionality  of  the  acts,  to  secure 
an  injunction  to  prevent  their  enforcement  were  frustrated  by 
the  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  that  it  had  no  jurisdiction, 
and  when  a  case  was  found  which  the  Court  could  consider, 
Congress  in  a  panic  repealed  the  act  in  question  and  quashed 
the  suit.  There  seemed  literally  to  be  no  method  of  restrain 
ing  the  unlimited  authority  claimed  by  Congress;  the  Presi 
dent  's  veto  was  no  check ;  the  Supreme  Court  could  not  prop 
erly  interfere  with  instances  of  executive  or  legislative  dis 
cretion  and  could  under  any  circumstances  consider  only  con 
tentious  cases  brought  to  its  bar  by  private  citizens. 

But  the  injustice  and  bad  faith  of  Congress  even  more  than 
the  inconsistency  and  unconstitutionally  of  the  scheme  roused 
bitter  opposition  both  North  and  South.  During  the  sum 
mer  and  fall  of  1867,  the  elections  were  held  and  the  "  Black 
and  Tan"  Conventions  chosen,  chiefly  of  Northern  " carpet 
baggers,  ' '  poor  whites,  and  negroes.  ' '  No  such  hideous  bodies 
of  men  had  ever  been  assembled  before  upon  the  soil  of 
the  United  States"  to  assist  in  constitution-making.  In 
Alabama,  the  General  in  charge  ordered  the  election  of  State 
officers  to  be  held  at  the  same  time  as  the  vote  on  the  adop 
tion  of  the  Constitution;  for  this  Johnson  recalled  him. 
Moreover,  a  majority  of  the  citizens  stayed  away  from  the 
polls  in  order  to  defeat  the  Constitution,  because  the  Re 
construction  Act  required  an  affirmative  vote  by  a  majority 
of  the  electorate,  voting  at  the  election.  Congress  now 
capped  the  climax  of  injustice  and  shameful  dealing  by  voting 
that  the  holding  of  elections  at  the  same  time  as  the  vote 
for  ratification  of  the  Constitution  was  valid,  and  that  the 
approval  of  the  Constitution  by  a  majority  of  those  voting 
would  be  sufficient  to  secure  its  adoption.  This  legislation 
was  applied  ex  post  facto  to  the  Alabama  election.  The 
crisis  between  the  President  and  Congress  resulted  in  the 
winter  of  1867  and  1868  in  the  attempt  to  impeach  Johnson, 
a  scandal  which  was  a  fit  companion  to  the  drama  being  en 
acted  at  the  South.  In  the  summer  of  1868,  with  the  presi 
dential  election  approaching,  with  the  Northern  Democrats 


CONGRESSIONAL  RECONSTRUCTION  381 

rapidly  growing  in  strength  on  account  of  the  open  disap 
proval  of  Congressional  Reconstruction,  the  Republicans  saw 
that,  even  with  Grant  as  a  candidate,  they  would  almost  cer 
tainly  lose  the  election  unless  they  could  secure  the  votes  of 
the  Southern  States.  With  undue  haste  and  unseemly  in 
consistency,  seven  States  were  reinstated  in  time  to  vote  and 
the  Fourteenth  Amendment  was  declared  a  part  of  the  Consti 
tution.  This  reinforcement,  coupled  with  Grant's  candidacy, 
the  promise  of  bountiful  pensions  and  the  payment  of  the  debt 
in  sound  currency,  enabled  the  party  to  weather  the  storm 
of  Northern  disapproval.  The  acme  of  inconsistency  was 
reached,  however,  when  the  Republican  platform  announced 
that  negro  suffrage  was  not  to  be  required  of  the  Northern 
States — a  stand  too  obviously  unjust  to  be  maintained  and 
in  the  following  session  the  Fifteenth  Amendment  was  passed. 
It  did  not  actually  confer  suffrage  upon  the  negro  but  pre 
vented  his  exclusion  on  the  ground  of  his  race,  color,  or  previ 
ous  condition  of  servitude,  and  in  particular,  it  prevented  the 
amendment  of  the  new  Southern  constitutions  and  thus  guar 
anteed  the  continued  existence  of  the  Republican  Party  in  the 
South.  By  1870,  all  the  Southern  States  had  complied  with 
all  the  exactions  of  Congress  and  had  been  readmitted,  but 
the  Reconstruction  which  should  have  been  the  birth  time  of 
ithe  new  nation  had  very  nearly  resulted  in  its  disruption. 


XXVIII 
THE  SOLID  SOUTH 

THE  results  of  Congressional  Reconstruction  were  only  too 
soon  apparent  in  the  growing  hostility  of  the  South  to  such 
measures.  Fortunately  for  the  new  national  consciousness — 
that  greatest  of  the  results  of  the  War,  the  resentment  of  the 
Southern  whites  was  not  visited  upon  the  North  as  a  whole 
but  rather  upon  the  men  then  in  control  at  Washington  and 
upon  their  more  selfish  and  individual  aims.  For  the  most 
part,  however,  the  broad  humanitarian  aspect  of  the  move 
ments  after  the  War,  which  made  so  much  impression  upon  the 
North,  was  totally  lost  upon  the  South.  The  latter  saw  in 
the  Congressional  measures  the  work  of  a  cabal  striving  at 
whatever  cost  to  both  South  and  North  to  ensure  the  ascend 
ency  of  the  Republican  Party  over  the  Democratic  opposition 
throughout  the  country,  and  to  increase  by  fair  means  or  foul 
the  relative  authority  and  prestige  of  the  legislature  as  com 
pared  with  the  executive.  The  tools  of  the  Congressional 
leaders  were  the  reconstructed  governments,  without  whose 
votes  they  could  not  continue  in  control  of  the  Federal  govern 
ment,  and  of  which  they  could  retain  control  only  by  such  des 
perate  expedients  as  negro  suffrage  and  unfair  interference 
with  the  attempts  of  the  whites  at  the  South  to  free  them 
selves  from  the  bondage  of  negro  ascendency.  Indeed,  the 
Southerners  felt  sure  that  the  negro  governments  would  have 
lasted  but  a  short  time  (and  Congress  thoroughly  agreed  with 
them)  but  for  the  support  furnished  by  the  army  and  the 
Freedman's  Bureau  acting  under  the  radical  measures  di 
rected  or  sanctioned  by  the  Enforcement  Acts.  The  purpose, 
the  method,  the  result,  all  were  to  the  Southerners  vile  be 
yond  the  power  of  language  to  describe. 

382 


THE  SOLID  SOUTH  383 

That  the  military  and  negro  governments  meant  the  post 
ponement  for  as  long  as  they  might  last  the  construction  of  a 
new  legal,  social,  and  economic  fabric  for  a  new  South  was  to 
the  leaders  the  most  burning  wrong  they  could  have  suffered. 
The  losses  of  the  War  had  been  hard  to  bear,  but  these  losses, 
so  unnecessary  and  so  much  more  taxing  to  the  shattered  re 
sources  of  the  South,  seemed  almost  beyond  human  endurance. 
The  new  South  must  be  built  upon  truth,  not  upon  falsehood. 
The  exaltation  of  the  negro,  " loyalty  under  a  black  skin,"  as 
more  trustworthy  and  as  capable  and  virtuous  as  the  white 
man,  was  to  them  a  flat  contradiction  of  existing  facts.1  Upon 
such  a  foundation  nothing  could  be  built.  Its  falsity  and 
iniquity  were  demonstrated  by  the  almost  inconceivable  bad 
ness  of  the  work  of  the  reconstructed  governments.  "The 
lion  had  had  his  turn,"  wrote  Francis  Parkman,2  "and  now 
the  fox,  the  jackal,  and  the  wolf  took  theirs." 

South  Carolina,  which  furnishes  us  with  probably  the  worst 
case  of  negro  domination,  is  also  the  best  case  to  study  be 
cause  the  negroes  were  largely  in  the  majority,  and  because 
the  army,  the  Freedman's  Bureau,  and  the  Enforcement  Acts 
effectively  prevented  any  interference  with  their  rule.  The 
majority  of  the  legislature  and  of  the  most  important  officers 
were  negroes  and  the  rest  were  rascally  whites  from  the  North 
or  even  more  unsavory  characters  from  the  South.  A  "Band 
of  Forty  Thieves"  unblushingly  sold  themselves  to  the  high 
est  bidder.  The  barbarous  luxury  and  extravagance  at  the 
Capitol  were  unexampled — $1600  was  paid  for  two  hun 
dred  imported  china  spittoons,  $750  apiece  for  French  mirrors 
for  the  Speaker's  Room,  while  a  bar  and  restaurant  dispensed 
free  food  and  drink  to  members  and  their  friends.  Hundreds 
of  pardons  were  openly  sold  to  criminals  by  the  Governors. 
Nearly  $600,000  was  spent  on  worn  out  rice-fields  and  sand 
hills,  for  the  relief  of  negroes.  The  land  was  not  worth 
$100,000 ;  not  a  hundred  negroes  were  ever  settled  on  it ;  the 
Committee  drew  $100,000  more  than  its  appropriation  and 

1  Supra,  p.  370-2. 

2  Farnham,  Life  of  Parkman,  275. 


384  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

never  accounted  at  all  for  the  expenditure  of  more  than  a 
quarter  of  a  million  dollars.  So  much  for  black  philanthropy ! 
In  1860,  the  taxable  property  in  South  Carolina  had  been 
$316,000,000,  which  had  shrunk  in  1871  to  $184,000,000 ;  the 
taxes  had  risen,  however,  from  $392,000  to  $2,000,000.  The 
valuation  had  decreased  40%  ;  the  taxes  had  risen  500%  ;  and 
the  State  debt  increased  400%.  The  taxes  were  levied  by 
the  negroes,  of  whom  scarcely  20%  had  any  property  at  all 
and  of  whom  80%  were  totally  illiterate,  and  were  paid  by 
the  whites  the  vast  majority  of  whom  were  disfranchised  for 
participation  in  the  War. 

To  the  Southerners,  the  worst  part  was  the  forcible  main 
tenance  of  such  a  regime  by  the  Federal  troops,  by  the  Freed- 
man's  Bureau,  by  negro  militia,  for  the  most  selfish  of  polit 
ical  purposes,  as  they  conceived  it,  the  continued  supremacy 
of  the  Republican  Party.  If  slavery  had  been  anti-democratic 
and  was  for  that  reason  alien  to  the  spirit  of  American  insti 
tutions,  what  name  should  be  applied  to  the  maintenance  of 
the  Republican  Party  in  power  by  means  of  ignorance  and  in 
capacity  supported  by  fraud  and  violence  in  defiance  of  the 
expressed  will  of  the  Democrats,  North  and  South?  D.  H. 
Chamberlain,  the  white  Governor  of  South  Carolina  who  res 
cued  that  State,  many  times  met  the  Congressional  leaders  in 
Washington.  No  less  Northern  a  periodical  than  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  3  published  his  gently  worded  but  crushing  arraign 
ment  of  Stevens  and  his  colleagues.  "Not  one  of  these  leaders 
had  seen  the  South  or  studied  it  first  hand.  Not  one  of  them 
professed  or  cared  to  know  more.  They  had  made  up  their 
minds  once  for  all  and  they  wished  only  to  push  on  with 
their  predetermined  policy.  .  .  .  The  personal  knowledge  of 
the  writer  warrants  him  in  stating  that  eyes  were  never  blinder 
to  facts,  minds  never  more  ruthlessly  set  upon  a  policy,  than 
were  Stevens  and  Morton  on  putting  the  white  South  under 
the  heel  of  the  black  South."  It  was  told  of  Stevens,  and 
believed  to  be  a  characteristic  story,  that,  when  informed  both 
applicants  for  a  certain  office  in  the  South  were  thorough  ras- 

s  Vol.  LXXXVII,  p.  474. 


THE  SOLID  SOUTH  385 

cals,  he  vociferated,  "What  do  I  care  for  that?  Tell  me 
which  is  our  rascal/'  On  the  whole,  the  men  who  had  really 
been  the  backbone  of  the  North  during  the  War  did  not  ap 
prove  of  the  Congressional  policy  of  Reconstruction.  There 
seems  to  be  little  reason  to  doubt  that  after  1867  the  popular 
majority  at  the  North  was  Democratic  and  thoroughly  hostile 
to  Reconstruction.  Indeed,  this  very  fact  must  be  appreciated 
to  understand  why  certain  features  of  the  Congressional  policy 
were  devised  and  adopted  at  all. 

The  South  was  saved  by  the  moderation  and  real  devotion 
of  the  Southern  whites  aided  by  the  Northern  Democrats. 
The  methods  used  were  empirical  and  were  discovered  almost 
by  accident.  To  deal  with  the  arrogant  negroes  and  protect 
the  lives  and  honor  of  the  whites,  which  the  Southern  men  were 
afraid  to  entrust  solely  to  the  scattered  Federal  troops,  secret 
organizations  were  devised  and  had  their  greatest  currency 
and  success  between  1868  and  1872.  Unable  to  organize  pub 
licly  because  of  the  attitude  of  the  authorities  at  Washington, 
"it  was  therefore  necessary  in  order  to  protect  our  families 
from  outrage  and  preserve  our  own  lives  to  have  something 
that  we  could  regard  as  a  brotherhood, — a  combination  of  the 
best  men  in  the  country  to  act  purely  in  self-defense,  to  repel 
attack  in  case  we  should  be  attacked  by  these  people.  That 
was  the  whole  object  of  this  organization,"  testified  General 
Gordon  in  later  years. 

In  1870,  the  Freedman's  Bureau  was  abolished,  the  corps  of 
the  army  soon  after  entirely  withdrawn,  and  the  artificial  sup 
port  of  the  carpet-baggers  and  negroes  disappeared.  Grad 
ually,  too,  the  whites  who  had  been  disqualified  for  participa 
tion  in  the  War  were  qualifying  as  voters,  and,  as  the  negroes 
were  in  the  numerical  majority  in  only  three  States,  it  was 
clear  that  the  whites  would  control  the  other  States  as  soon  as 
they  could  be  reinstated.  It  was  seen,  however,  that  the  white 
vote  must  be  cast  for  the  Democratic  party  and  its  candidates. 
Hence  arose  the  Solid  South,  a  white  South  based  upon  the 
exclusion  of  the  negro  from  political  power.  To  secure  the 
election  of  the  first  white  candidates,  and  to  anticipate  as 


386  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

much  as  possible  the  day  when  the  restoration  of  the  vote  to 
the  whole  white  electorate  should  entirely  place  the  power 
f~  In  their  hands,  it  was  seen  that  the  intimidation  of  negroes  to 
\  prevent  them  from  voting  would  be  useful,  if  not  actually  es- 
(^sential.  The  superstitious  terror  of  the  negroes  for  the  Ku 
Klux  Klan  and  similar  societies  suggested  their  use  to  keep 
enough  of  them  from  the  polls  to  allow  the  whites  to  succeed 
in  choosing  their  candidates.  Much  exaggeration  and  vilifica 
tion  of  the  influence  and  purpose  of  these  mysterious  orders 
has  been  common  and  probably  many  rascals  took  advantage 
of  the  familiar  disguises  to  perpetrate  crimes  which  were 
wrongly  ascribed  to  the  orders.  In  South  Carolina,  where  the 
negroes  formed  a  majority  of  the  population,  salvation  came 
through  the  splendid  honesty  and  ability  of  a  white  man, 
elected  by  the  negroes  themselves,  who  turned  upon  them  and, 
after  a  hard  fight,  led  the  whites  to  victory. 

The  greatest  problem  lay  in  the  maintenance  of  the  whites 
in  the  ascendency,  and,  in  the  States  where  the  negroes  formed 
the  majority,  this  could  be  permanently  assured  only  by  the 
disfranchisement  of  enough  negroes  to  leave  the  whites  in  the 
majority.  It  was  soon  clear  that  the  Fifteenth  Amendment 
was  not  mandatory:  it  did  not  provide  that  negroes  should 
vote,  but  that  they  should  not  be  excluded  from  the  electorate 
by  a  constitutional  or  statutory  provision  which  in  express 
words  or  by  necessary  implication  excluded  them  solely  on 
the  ground  of  race,  color,  or  previous  condition  of  servitude. 
Any  limitation  of  the  suffrage  by  educational  or  property 
qualifications,  applicable  to  all  classes  and  races,  would  ef 
fectually  and  constitutionally  exclude  the  negroes  from  the 
electorate.  It  was  also  apparent  that  the  national  govern 
ment  was  not  empowered  to  investigate  the  manner  in  which 
each  State's  officials  exercised  such  discretionary  authority  as 
might  be  conferred  upon  them  in  applying  such  statutes  to 
individual  cases.  If  the  officials  declared  the  white  man  liter 
ate  and  the  black  man  illiterate  in  defiance  of  the  facts,  there 
would  not  be  any  remedy.  The  official's  right  to  decide 
could  not  be  taken  from  him  nor  his  use  of  it  investigated 


THE  SOLID  SOUTH  387 

by  Federal  authority.  If  the  white  man  was  invariably  asked 
to  prove  his  ability  to  read  by  "reading"  a  short  phrase  which 
could  be  easily  learned  beforehand,  and  the  negro  was  re 
quired  to  show  genuine  intelligence,  it  would  be  a  simple  mat 
ter  to  qualify  even  the  ignorant  whites  and  exclude  all  but  the 
educated  blacks,  for  the  vast  majority  of  the  negroes  were  ut 
terly  illiterate.  By  such  measures,  enforced  by  such  a  use  of 
the  discretionary  authority  of  the  executive,  all  the  Southern 
States  soon  reduced  the  negro  electorate  to  a  safe  minority. 

Meanwhile,  it  had  become  apparent  that  the  severe  pressure 
of  circumstances  would  not  permanently  prevent  vital  differ 
ences  of  opinion  among  the  whites  on  other  questions  of  policy 
than  white  supremacy,  and  that  soon  some  method  of  debat 
ing  other  issues  among  the  whites  would  be  imperative  to 
avoid  any  possible  split  in  their  ranks  and  any  consequent  loss 
of  the  election  to  the  Black  Republicans.  Then  they  resorted 
to  the  machinery  of  the  Democratic  Party.  The  qualifications 
for  membership  were  not  affected  by  the  Fifteenth  Amend 
ment  because  the  Party  was  not  legally  in  existence.  Within 
its  organization  the  whites  might  disagree,  debate,  and  finally 
reach  some  decision  as  to  candidates  and  policies,  which  they 
could  then  make  effective  at  the  legal  election  by  a  solid  vote. 
The  negroes  have  been  excluded  from  the  Democratic  Party; 
they  still  are  a  minority  of  the  legal  electorate  in  all  the 
Southern  States;  and  they  have  thus  been  effectually  robbed 
of  all  the  real  exercise  of  political  power  which  the  humani 
tarians  and  politicians  sought  to  give  them,  but  which  they 
were  not  as  a  race  qualified  to  use. 

By  1870,  all  the  Southern  States  had  in  one  way  or  another 
been  restored  to  their  places  in  the  Union ;  by  1877  the  whites 
had  recovered  control  of  the  State  government  in  all  and  the 
period  usually  known  as  the  Reconstruction  was  over.  In 
reality,  the  struggles  of  the  twelve  years  following  the  War 
had  merely  enabled  the  Southern  whites  to  remove  the  worst 
obstacles  sown  in  the  way  of  the  construction  of  a  really  new 
South  by  the  pernicious  activity  of  Congress.  The  building 
of  the  New  South  did  not  begin  anywhere  much  before  1870  . 


388  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

and  in  some  States  not  till  1877.  Nor  has  the  North  in  any 
proper  sense  been  responsible  for  the  making  of  the  new 
South :  the  Southerners  themselves  have  solved  their  own  prob 
lems  with  the  assistance  of  mighty  factors  whose  operation  no 
one  foresaw. 

The  Southerners  have  aided  economic  forces  in  solving  the 
economic  problems  which  conditions  both  before  and  after  the 
War  had  created.  The  insistent  cry  for  more  land  had  been 
chiefly  due  to  the  fact  that  only  the  most  fertile  soil  yielded 
large  returns  to  the  crude  labor  of  the  slaves  and  that  its 
virgin  productiveness  was  so  soon  exhausted  that  the  planters 
must  be  constantly  clearing  new  land.  Moreover,  only  land 
along  the  rivers  was  wanted  because  the  river  furnished  an 
easy,  cheap  method  of  transportation,  while  the  cultivation  of 
the  land  a  few  miles  away,  and  in  particular  of  the  uplands, 
required  transportation  of  the  crops,  the  expense  of  which 
greatly  reduced  the  amount  of  profit  and  prevented  competi 
tion  with  the  river-bottoms.  Nor  was  the  quality  of  the  cotton 
grown  outside  of  the  river-bottoms  as  good.  The  upland  soil 
lacked  certain  necessary  chemical  constituents  and  the  product 
was  less  in  amount  and  difficult  to  prepare  for  market. 
Modern  scientific  agriculture  and  modern  machinery  plus  the 
railroad  have  completely  obviated  these  fundamental  diffi 
culties.  It  is  now  possible  cheaply  to  fertilize  the  fields  and 
crop  them  year  after  year;  it  is  possible  to  till  fields  never 
before  profitable  and  to  cleanse  cheaply  by  machinery  cotton 
which  before  the  War  could  not  have  been  used  at  all.  The 
network  of  railroad  trunk  lines,  growing  constantly  through 
out  the  South,  has  put  thousands  of  acres  into  close  contact 
with  the  market  which  were  before  the  War  hopelessly  isolated. 
With  the  introduction  of  better  tools  and  better  methods,  of 
fertilizers  and  intensive  agriculture,  a  larger  crop  has  been 
constantly  grown  with  fewer  hands. 

On  the  whole,  too,  even  "unreconstructed"  Southerners  are 
compelled  to  admit  that  the  free  negro  is  a  more  intelligent 
and  industrious  worker  than  the  old  slave,  that  there  is  to-day 
less  labor  wasted  than  there  used  to  be.  The  experience  of 


THE  SOLID  SOUTH  389 

the  South  since  the  War  has  conclusively  disproved  the  Jere 
miads  of  1858  that  cotton  could  not  be  grown  without  slaves 
and  that  emancipation  would  destroy  the  industry.-  Indeed, 
far  from  interfering  with  its  development,  free  labor,  aided 
by  a  great  number  of  other  powerful  factors,  has  produced 
cotton  at  an  even  faster  rate  than  before.  The  old  assump 
tions  of  profitable  cultivation — fertile  land  and  cheap  labor — 
have  been  proved  true,  but  experience  has  shown  that  virgin 
soil  is  not  necessarily  the  most  fertile  cotton  land  nor  ignorant 
slave-labor  necessarily  the  cheapest. 

At  the  same  time,  the  negro  has  not  shown  himself  as  capa' 
ble,  industrious,  and  energetic  as  the  eager  humanitarians  as 
sumed  he  would  be  once  his  shackles  had  been  struck  off. 
Men  are  not  changed  by  legislative  fiat  nor  by  the  good  in 
tentions  of  other  people.  Whether  the  result  of  inherent 
racial  deficiencies  or  of  the  environment  provided  by  slavery, 
the  negro  as  a  race  has  not  been  capable  of  self-development, 
and  the  more  intelligent  negroes  themselves  now  realize  that 
their  fathers  were  economic  as  much  as  legal  slaves,  and  that 
emancipation  did  not  strike  off  the  economic  shackles  welded 
by  the  negroes'  own  ignorance,  laziness,  and  lack  of  personal 
ambition  and  moral  strength.  Educational  and  religious  or 
ganizations  have  accomplished  much  and  will  undoubtedly  ac 
complish  proportionately  more  each  decade,  but  the  solution 
of  the  negroes'  difficulties  has  been  found  in  the  exercise  by 
most  employers  of  a  sort  of  patriarchal  authority.  Nothing 
else  has  saved  the  more  superstitious  and  more  ignorant  from 
the  clutches  of  the  loan  shark,  from  constant  imprisonment 
for  petty  offenses,  and  from  chronic  beggary  and  want.  It 
has  been  necessary  to  pay  the  negro  in  food  and  clothes  be 
cause  he  nearly  invariably  gambled  away  the  money  or  bought 
with  it  valueless  and  useless  trinkets  at  extortionate  prices. 
Naturally,  this  situation  has  permitted  the  unscrupulous  em 
ployer  to  exact  " contract  labor,"  to  create  permanent  debts 
at  his  "truck"  store,  and  terrorize  the  unfortunate  negroes 
with  impossible  penalties  for  trivial  crimes.  In  an  infinitely 
greater  number  of  cases,  it  has  compelled  the  white  employer 


390  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

to  advance  supplies  to  the  negro  and  his  family  far  in  excess 
of  the  value  of  the  labor  performed  and  constantly  to  care 
for  them  through  sickness  and  hard  times.  It  should  be  more 
generally  and  more  generously  admitted  that  the  vast  ma 
jority  of  Southerners  have  conscientiously  and  nobly  acquitted 
themselves  of  their  responsibility  toward  the  negro.  At  the 
same  time,  despite  the  assistance  of  the  better  class  of  em 
ployers,  between  the  loan  shark,  the  unscrupulous  poor  whites 
often  chosen  to  judgeships  and  legal  offices,  thieving  agents, 
and  unjust  employers,  the  negroes  as  a  class  have  enjoyed  any 
thing  but  ideal  economic  freedom  since  1865  and  have  in 
many  cases  been  less  contented  and  less  well  cared  for  than 
the  slaves  were  on  the  more  humane  plantations  before  the 
^War.  The  negro  is  indeed  his  own  greatest  problem. 

Yet,  while  the  Southern  sentiment  is  still  strong  against  any 
recognition  of  social  equality,  the  best  opinion  is  now  insistent 
upon  the  strict  enforcement  of  laws  which  will  ensure  even  the 
most  ignorant  and  credulous  negroes  from  exploitation  at  the 
hands  of  the  unscrupulous  of  all  sorts,  varieties,  and  shades, 
and  give  them  actual  civil  and  economic  equality  with  white 
men  of  the  same  capacity.  The  most  serious  aspect  of  the 
negro  problem  was  and  still  is  the  existence  of  these  millions 
of  an  alien  race  compelled  by  circumstances  to  live  in  the 
midst  of  the  white  South.  Slavery  was  no  remedy  because  it 
meant  the  perpetuation  of  the  evil.  Emancipation  was  the 
only  possible  permanent  remedy  because  it  alone  could  pro 
vide  the  negro  with  the  possibilities  of  unlimited  development 
and  change.  The  only  permanent  solution  will  of  course 
be  the  gradual  transformation  of  the  ignorant,  shiftless,  and 
superstitious  cotton-hand  into  such  intelligent,  industrious, 
capable,  colored  men,  really  as  well  as  nominally  the  equal  of 
the  white  man  in  all  civil  and  political  pursuits,  as  have  de 
veloped  in  some  number  since  the  war.  The  latter  are  yet 
only  a  bare  handful  and  in  the  nature  of  things,  as  normal 
processes  of  evolution  are  slow,  will  become  the  majority  only 
in  course  of  generations.  Emancipation  spelled  opportunity, 
not  fulfilment. 


THE  SOLID  SOUTH  391 

Again,  while  emancipation  and  the  War  provided  oppor 
tunities,  removed  artificial  obstacles,  they  did  not  and  could 
not  create  the  economic  forces  which  have  caused  so  remark 
able  a  transformation  of  the  poor  white  as  the  years  since 
Reconstruction  have  seen.  Natural  forces  have  been  freeing 
him  from  his  economic  slavery  by  the  creation  and  wide  de 
velopment  of  diversified  industry  and  of  improved  agriculture. 
Cheap  steel  has  meant  more  railroads,  better  and  cheaper 
transportation  facilities,  cheaper  machinery,  and  the  possi 
bility  of  transporting  it  cheaply,  cheap  coal  and  the  certainty 
of  a  steady  supply  for  factories  operated  by  steam  in  loca 
tions  where  the  lack  of  water-power  and  of  raw  materials  had 
hitherto  prevented  their  development.  The  factory,  spinning 
and  weaving  cotton  in  the  South  at  the  source  of  the  supply  of 
cotton  and  labor,  has  successfully  competed  with  older 
Northern  and  European  firms,  better  organized  and  with  more 
skilful  but  higher  paid  labor.  The  new  agriculture,  the  use 
of  fertilizers,  of  selected  seed  have  made  again  fertile  lands 
long  considered  to  have  been  worn  out.  Access  to  the  rail 
roads  has  made  it  possible  to  market  the  crop  to  advantage, 
and,  though  cotton  is  still  the  great  source  of  income  in  most 
Southern  States  and  still  prevents  the  adequate  development 
of  agricultural  and  mineral  resources  in  general,  the  change 
for  the  better  is  very  marked.  In  this  as  in  every  other  direc 
tion  the  factors  solving  the  Southern  problem  have  been  eco 
nomic  and  social,  not  political  and  legal, — the  application  of 
science  to  the  fundamental  geological  difficulties  which  made 
the  South  in  1850  what  it  was. 

Best  of  all,  the  railroads,  the  telegraph,  the  press,  schools 
and  education  are  welding  the  Southern  people  to  each  other 
and  to  the  nation  at  large.  The  country  is  truly  interdepend 
ent  for  the  first  time  and  is  realizing  more  and  more  that  its 
future  is  interlocked  with  that  of  the  nation  at  large.  While 
the  wounds  of  the  War,  augmented  by  the  trials  of  Recon 
struction,  are  not  yet  entirely  healed,  there  are  now  few,  if 
any,  who  do  not  feel  themselves  Americans  and  not  South 
erners. 


XXIX 
NATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

THE  truly  fundamental  and  difficult  problems,  which  had  for 
so  many  generations  caused  concern  and  anxiety  to  American 
statesmen  and  merchants,  were  finally  solved  in  the  decades 
succeeding  the  Civil  War,  but  neither  the  War  itself  nor  any 
of  the  political  or  constitutional  developments  resultant  from 
it  or  subsequent  to  it  had  more  than  a  subsidiary  influence  in 
consummating  the  settlement.  As  the  problems  were  them 
selves  economic,  the  result  of  the  character  of  the  new  country, 
of  its  people,  and  of  its  natural  backwardness  in  develop 
ment,  so  the  solution  was  itself  the  work  of  economic  forces, 
which  solved  the  problems  by  literally  obviating  the  economic 
difficulties  out  of  which  they  arose. 

The  dependence  of  America  upon  Europe  had  colored  the 
whole  of  Colonial  history  and  had  largely  shaped  political 
and  constitutional  events  before  1860.  Free  trade  with  the 
West  Indies  had  been  the  fundamental  condition  of  Colonial 
economic  development  and  to  secure  it  political  and  consti 
tutional  relationships  had  been  created  or  rejected.  The  dis 
obedience  to  the  Navigation  Acts,  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolu 
tion,  the  War  of  1812,  the  protective  tariff,  the  "American 
System, ' '  and  much  more  had  been  the  direct  result  of  Ameri 
can  economic  dependence  on  Europe.  With  the  development 
of  the  cotton-culture,  a  medium  of  direct  exchange  with 
Europe  appeared,  and  with  the  concomitant  growth  of  di 
versified  industry  in  the  North  and  the  use  of  machinery  and 
fertilizers  by  the  West  in  agriculture,  the  dependence  on 
European  manufactured  goods  and  the  lack  of  a  home  market 
for  American  produce  were  no  longer  so  pronounced.  Be 
fore  1860  a  beginning  had  been  made,  but  the  economic  de- 

392 


NATIONAL  PROBLEMS  393 

velopment  of  the  country  since  the  War  finally  and  decisively 
freed  us  from  the  old  economic  shackles  hitherto  binding  us 
to  Europe.  America  and  Europe  are  now  fairly  interdepend 
ent.  Our  " infant  industries "  have  disappeared;  the  old 
tariff  problem  has  disappeared  with  the  cessation  of  the 
economic  dependence  whose  disastrous  effects  it  was  intended 
to  mitigate.  The  growth  of  the  country, — and  not  the  Revo 
lution,  the  Civil  War,  or  the  tariff, — has  made  us  economi 
cally  independent  of  the  rest  of  the  world. 

The  second  greatest  problem  in  American  development, 
the  lack  of  a  medium  of  exchange  between  sections  of  the 
country,  has  been  similarly  solved  by  the  growth  of  the 
United  States.  The  disappearance  of  the  problem  has  ended 
the  internal  quarrels  in  America  which  were  such  striking  fac 
tors  in  1776,  in  1812,  and  in  1861.  One  fundamental  cause 
of  the  difficulty  had  been  the  lack  of  a  domestic  supply  of 
specie  from  which  or  on  which  a  sound  currency  could  be 
based,  for  the  dependence  of  the  country  on  Europe  prevented 
us  from  retaining  here  enough  of  the  world's  supply  of  the 
precious  metals  to  serve  our  purpose.  Another  basic  diffi 
culty  had  lain  in  the  existence  of  highly  developed  com 
munities  along  the  coast  and  of  primitive  districts  in  the  in 
terior,  the  latter  being  necessarily  and  inevitably  in  debt  to 
the  former.  Thus  had  grown  up  debtor  and  creditor  classes 
in  all  parts  of  Colonial  America,  and  debtor  and  creditor 
sections  in  post-revolutionary  America,  which,  as  the  belt 
of  settlement  extended  westward,  ceased  to  be  a  source  of 
discord  within  each  State  and  produced  an  alignment  of 
States  and  then  of  sections  of  which  the  Western  were  al 
ways  the  debtors  of  the  Eastern  States  or  sections.  The  favor 
ite  remedy  for  this  difficulty  of  domestic  exchange  through 
out  American  history  has  been  plenty  of  money,  or  cheap 
money,  and  it  has  appeared  in  various  guises  from  the  land 
banks  and  paper  money  crazes  of  Colonial  times  to  the  repu 
diation  of  debts  during  the  Critical  Period  and  the  Green 
back  and  Free  Silver  agitations  in  1876  and  1896.  Always 
the  problem  has  been  the  same:  a  fundamental  difficulty  in 


394  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

maintaining  the  equilibrium  of  exchange  between  the  vari 
ous  parts  of  the  country  and  consequently  a  very  serious 
pressure  on  individuals  in  the  debtor  sections  the  moment 
an  economic  crisis  like  the  Panics  of  1837,  1873,  or  1892 
existed.  It  has  always  been  necessary  for  coin  or  currency 
to  "flow"  from  the  East  to  the  West  and  South  "to  move 
the  crops,"  and,  when  during  a  panic  the  demand  for  West 
ern  and  Southern  products  decreases,  the  scarcity  of  demand 
manifests  itself  usually  to  the  farmer  and  planter  as  a 
scarcity  of  currency.  Hence  the  widespread  belief  in  the 
debtor  districts  in  1873  that  enough  greenbacks  would  remedy 
their  particular  troubles,  and  in  1896,  that  silver  coined  at  a 
ratio  of  16  to  1  would  relieve  the  distress. 

The  difficulty  is  now  almost,  if  not  entirely,  obviated.  In 
the  first  place,  the  discovery  of  gold  in  California  in  1849, 
of  silver  in  Nevada  shortly  after,  and  of  gold  in  Alaska, 
has  provided  the  United  States  with  an  indigenous  supply 
of  specie  more  than  adequate  to  meet  the  demands  for  specie 
as  currency.  We  now  dig  out  of  the  ground  a  commodity 
which  Hamilton  had  to  husband  with  the  greatest  care  for 
fear  no  more  wrould  be  procurable  in  case  the  little  he  had 
were  hoarded  or  exported.  But  the  more  vital  difficulty,  the 
dependence  of  America  upon  Europe,  the  dependence  of  the 
West  and  South  upon  the  East,  has  been  itself  fundamentally 
altered  by  the  increase  of  wealth  and  population  through 
out  the  country  and  in  particular  by  the  rise  in  the  Mississippi 
Valley  of  a  strong  diversified  economic  life,  by  the  growth  of 
the  New  South,  by  the  development  of  the  Pacific  Coast 
States.  The  disappearance  of  the  frontier,  the  extraordinary 
increase  of  population  from  about  thirty-one  millions  in 
1860  to  seventy-six  millions  in  1900  and  to  over  one  hun 
dred  millions  in  1914,  the  rapid  immigration,  the  distribu 
tion  of  land  by  the  government,  either  free  or  for  nominal 
payments  only,  have  effectively  destroyed  the  peculiar  "fron 
tier"  conditions  which  in  themselves  were  the  most  difficult 
aspects  of  this  particular  problem.  As  the  country  has  be 
come  more  and  more  truly  interdependent,  the  independ- 


NATIONAL  PROBLEMS  3U5 

ence  of  each  section  has  become  more  and  more  marked  and 
its  dependence  less  and  less  apparent.  To-day,  no  section  is 
altogether  self-sufficing;  no  section  is  wholly  dependent;  all 
therefore  mutually  benefit  from  the  constant  interchange  of 
commodities.  The  rate  of  exchange  and  the  amount  of  cur 
rency  needed  are  after  all  results  of  the  comparison  of  ac 
tual  values,  and  such  difficulties  as  America  had  struggled 
with  were  due  to  fundamental  differences  in  the  degree  of 
economic  development  in  various  parts  of  the  country  which 
nothing  short  of  fundamental  economic  forces  could  remedy. 
Financial  policies  and  measures  like  those  of  Hamilton  and 
Gallatin  might  obviate  some  of  the  worst  difficulties  or  partially 
mitigate  the  seriousness  of  the  consequences,  but  only  an  actual 
economic  equality  between  America  and  Europe  and  between 
different  parts  of  the  United  States  could  really  make  the  con 
ditions  of  foreign  and  domestic  exchange  essentially  similar. 
The  third  problem  of  magnitude  with  which  American  his 
tory  had  been  concerned  was  the  constitutional  and  political 
relationship  of  individuals  to  each  other,  and  to  the  local, 
State,  or  central  government.  It  had  appeared  in  various 
guises  and  forms:  democracy,  States'  sovereignty,  nation 
ality,  personal  liberty,  slavery,  and  in  the  crowding  corollaries 
of  each  and  of  their  interaction  and  interrelation.  The 
operation  of  the  economic  forces  making  for  union  and 
nationality  and  for  the  abrogation  of  local  independence  and 
States'  rights  has  in  no  period  produced  as  marked  results 
as  in  the  decades  subsequent  to  the  Civil  War.  The  disap 
pearance  of  the  frontier  and  of  those  conditions  which  had 
hitherto  strongly  fostered  localism;  the  rapid  attainment  of 
something  like  contiguity  of  settlement  throughout  the  coun 
try  by  the  natural  growth  of  population  and  by  immigration; 
the  increasing  economic  interdependence  of  the  sections;  the 
absolute  dependence  of  the  urban  population  upon  the  na 
tionalization  of  trade  and  industry ;  all  are  rapidly  erasing  the 
old  State  lines  as  boundaries  marking  vital  differences  of  in 
terests  and  ideas.  With  the  cheapness  of  transportation  by 
rail  came  an  ease  of  the  movement  of  population  and  a  con- 


396  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

stant  shifting  of  individuals  from  one  State  to  another  and 
from  one  section  to  another,  which,  coupled  to  immigration,  is 
fast  obliterating  the  racial,  religious,  and  social  characteristics 
hitherto  regarded  as  typical  in  the  older  sections  and  States. 
The  population  is  becoming  homogeneous  both  in  blood  and  in 
traditions;  sectionalization  and  segregation  are  already  be 
coming  improbable  and  even  impossible. 

In  this  work  of  unifying  and  equalizing  the  population, 
schools,  universities,  newspapers,  magazines  have  played  a 
conspicuous  part.  The  evident  attempt  to  produce  books, 
papers,  and  literature  which  should  be  acceptable  to  all  in 
terests,  sections,  races,  and  creeds,  and  the  consistent  avoid 
ance  of  what  would  be  likely  to  appeal  to  a  part  only  has  had 
an  influence  towards  nationality  and  uniformity  which  is  ex 
ceedingly  clear  in  the  present  generation  of  children.  Sec 
tionalism,  localism,  States'  sovereignty,  traditional  notions  of 
class,  creed,  or  race  are  disappearing  with  an  astonishing 
rapidity  and  truly  national  ideas  are  taking  their  place.  The 
growth  of  the  country  has  given  us  a  national  idea  of  the  re 
lations  of  individuals  to  each  other,  of  the  individual  to  his 
own  State,  of  the  States  to  each  other,  and  to  the  Federal 
government.  Our  old  hatred  of  England  has  disappeared 
with  the  change  in  our  economic  condition.  The  antipathy  be 
tween  East,  and  West,  and  South  is  gone  because  of  the  new 
economic  interdependence.  The  abolition  of  slavery  has  re 
moved  the  only  thoroughly  undemocratic  institution  in 
America  and  the  negro  problem  is  slowly  but  surely  solving  it 
self  by  economic  and  educational  methods.  The  difficulties 
and  problems  are  still  great  but  they  are  no  longer  State 
or  sectional;  they  are  in  the  broadest  and  truest  sense  na 
tional. 

The  old  problems  have  disappeared  and  the  very  growth 
which  dissipated  them  has  caused  new  problems,  and  this  time 
national  problems  to  be  solved  by  the  nation  as  a  whole. 
Those  were  the  problems  of  growth,  these  are  issues  of  de 
velopment;  those  were  of  childhood  and  youth;  these  are  of 
manhood ;  those  concerned  with  the  strengthening  of  the  phys- 


NATIONAL  PROBLEMS  397 

ical  body  of  the  nation ;  these  with  the  expression  of  its  con 
science  and  the  development  of  its  corporate  mentality. 

We  are  confronted  with  a  nationalization  of  industry  in  the 
growth  since  the  Civil  War  of  transcontinental  railroads,  of 
enormous  trusts  and  combinations  controlling  production  or 
distribution  or  both  throughout  the  country  of  some  com 
modity  as  important  to  the  welfare  of  the  people  as  steel,  beef, 
or  oil.  We  must  understand  the  attempt  of  every  manu 
facturer  to  reach  a  national  market  and  so  to  standardize  and 
make  uniform  his  product  as  to  meet  the  demand  in  all  parts 
of  the  country.  We  have  also  seen  the  national  political 
parties  and  national  political  issues  completely  dominate,  as 
probably  never  before,  local,  municipal  and  State  parties  and 
policies.  The  new  nationalized  industry  has  influenced  the 
new  national  politics  and  parties,  and  this  vast  wealth  cen 
tralized  in  a  few  hands,  these  organizations  of  thousands  of 
men  controlled  by  railroads  and  trusts,  have  not  unnaturally 
exerted  great  influence  in  politics,  resulting,  as  many  believe,  < 
in  corruption  and  wrong.  With  power  and  wealth  has  come 
national  ambition  and  a  desire  for  expansion.  The  United 
States  has  acquired  the  Philippines  and  Porto  Rico,  is  build 
ing  the  Panama  Canal,  and  has  now  so  expanded  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  as  to  claim  a  right  of  interference  (and  perhaps  con 
trol)  in  the  Central  and  South  American  States,  which  some 
believe  to  portend  political  domination  of  the  Western  Hemi 
sphere.  The  new  nation  is  at  work  as  a  nation,  and  thinking, 
feeling,  aspiring  as  a  nation.  In  the  new  reform  movements, 
in  the  widespread  protests  against  graft  and  corruption,  in  the 
denunciation  of  the  white-slave  trade,  we  hear  the  national 
conscience  speaking.  By  writing,  speaking,  organizing,  we 
are  attempting  to  arrive  at  something  like  a  national  con 
sensus  of  opinion  as  to  the  problems,  their  causes,  and  the 
best  remedies. 

But  this  stupendous  growth  of  the  country  in  wealth  and 
in  population,  this  nationalization  of  industry,  of  politics,  of 
education,  of  literature,  of  reform,  has  vitally  changed  every 
aspect  of  American  life  as  Hamilton,  Jefferson,  and  Jackson 


398  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

knew  it.  It  has  altered  beyond  recognition  every  fundamental 
factor  in  the  structure  of  democracy  as  they  built  it  and  has 
created  a  problem  of  living  of  which  even  the  basic  condi 
tions  are  different.  American  democracy  is  not  what  it  was 
meant  to  be  because  America  is  no  longer  what  it  was  in  the 
times  of  Jefferson  and  Jackson. 

The  old  theoretical  assumptions,  from  which  were  derived 
a  belief  in  the  adequacy  of  democracy  to  govern  and  admin 
ister  efficiently  the  community's  affairs,  premised  the  pos 
session  by  the  electorate  of  sufficient  ability  to  pass  upon  the 
qualifications  of  candidates  and  upon  the  expediency  and 
justice  of  measures.  Jackson  indeed  based  manhood  suffrage 
and  the  reign  of  the  people  upon  a  deep-rooted  faith  in  the 
simplicity  of  governmental  issues.  It  was  to  him  therefore 
a  truism  that  every  man  in  the  community  possessed  the  polit 
ical  intelligence  requisite  for  a  just  decision  about  measures 
or  for  holding  offices,  to  formulate  or  execute  them.  On  the 
whole,  their  observation  of  conditions  taught  the  early  demo 
crats  that  government  was  no  peculiarly  difficult  art  to  be  per 
formed  by  experts,  but  an  obviously  simple  matter  of  which 
every  man  was  capable  as  soon  as  he  became  of  age.  Prob 
lems  were  really  few  and  simple  in  1787  and  had  not  greatly 
changed  in  1830;  the  average  man  did  understand  them  and 
did  know  the  candidates  nominated  for  office  in  the  rela 
tively  small  agricultural  community  in  which  he  lived.  The 
conditions  were  those  under  which  democracy  works  best,  and 
from  the  conditions  the  theorists  drew  the  premises  on  which 
they  built  the  larger  structure  of  central  government.  But 
they  naturally  did  not  perceive  the  effect  which  the  constant 
doubling  of  the  population  generation  after  generation  has 
had  on  the  electorate  and  on  administrative  issues.  It  has  be 
come  almost  impossible  for  a  well-educated  public-spirited  citi 
zen  to  vote  intelligently,  as  Jefferson  and  Jackson  assumed  as 
a  matter  of  course  he  would,  from  his  own  knowledge  of  candi 
dates  and  issues.  The  premises  of  democracy  are  no  longer 
true :  government  is  now  a  difficult  art  and  the  average  ' l  well- 
educated"  man  does  not  normally  possess  the  information  or 


NATIONAL  PROBLEMS  200 

experience  needed  to  qualify  him  either  to  participate  in  elec 
tions  or  to  hold  office. 

As  the  country  has  grown  in  size,  as  States  have  multiplied, 
as  cities  have  swollen  in  size  till  Greater  New  York  now  con 
tains  more  people  than  the  whole  of  America  held  in  1789, 
the  problems  thrust  upon  State  and  municipal  governments 
have  changed  utterly  in  character  from  those  familiar  in 
1830.  The  every-day  work  of  city  government — sanitation, 
water,  sewage,  lighting — can  be  adequately  performed  only 
by  the  application  of  scientific  knowledge  by  experts  and  by 
the  use  of  administrative  skill  of  a  high  order  in  organizing 
the  work  of  thousands  of  men,  whose  daily  cooperation  in 
tasks  most  men  performed  for  themselves  in  1830  is  now  a  pre 
requisite  of  public  health  and  safety.  City  problems  have  be 
come  engineering  difficulties  which  even  experts  do  not  always 
successfully  handle ;  State  problems  require  a  detailed  knowl 
edge  of  conditions  in  a  large  community  which  no  individual 
normally  possesses  at  all;  and  national  issues  like  the  tariff 
and  the  trusts  are  so  complex  and  difficult  that  years  of  study 
and  experience  are  necessary  even  to  comprehend  the  problem 
itself.  Though  education  has  spread  wider  and  wider 
throughout  the  community,  though  the  standard  has  risen  with 
each  generation  of  school  children,  yet  the  growth  of  the  com 
munity  has  been  robbing  the  electorate  bit  by  bit  of  that 
ability  to  understand  conditions  and  of  that  familiarity  with 
candidates  which  were  the  foundations  on  which  democratic 
government  was  built.  The  average  man  cannot  of  his  own 
knowledge  judge  measures  or  select  from  among  the  candi 
dates  nominated.  The  mere  size  of  the  community  has  made 
personal  information  about  its  needs  or  its  members  impos 
sible  for  the  vast  majority.  Upon  this  fact  have  been  based 
the  national  and  State  parties  to  judge  measures  and  select ' 
candidates  for  the  electorate. 

The  old  concept  of  democracy  adequately  satisfied  the  indi 
vidual's  craving  for  a  share  in  the  direction  of  affairs  be 
cause  the  notion  of  one  man,  one  vote,  rested  in  1830  upon  an 
actual  substantial  equality  of  ability,  education,  and  wealth. 


400  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Something  like  an  aristocracy  of  wealth  had  appeared  along 
the  seaboard  in  Colonial  times,  had  been  destroyed  by  the 
Revolution,  and  an  equality  of  fortunes  created.  In  the 
South,  slavery  and  the  cotton-culture  produced  another  un 
democratic  social  and  political  oligarchy  which  was  destroyed 
by  the  Civil  War.  During  the  last  generation  has  appeared 
once  more  a  wealthy  class,  whose  personnel  constantly  changes, 
but  whose  existence  is  once  more  creating  an  oligarchy  of 
property  whose  influence  on  social  life  in  the  larger  cities  and 
in  national  business  and  in  politics  is  only  too  clearly  great. 
"Big  business "  is  contrary  to  the  principles  of  Jacksonian 
democracy.  The  justice  of  assigning  each  individual  only  one 
vote  depended  upon  an  essential  identity  of  individual  inter 
ests,  and  huge  aggregations  of  capital,  a  radical  divergence  of 
interests  between  labor  and  capital,  are  contrary  to  the  old 
premises  of  democracy.  The  facts  do  not  coincide  with  the 
theory;  a  man's  legal  rights  clash  with  his  economic  status. 
The  vast  majority  of  the  electorate  are  to-day  non-taxpayers, 
but  they  control  the  appropriation  and  assessment  of  taxes. 
A  majority  of  the  electorate  are  in  the  ranks  of  labor.  Shall 
the  small  minority  which  capital  and  the  taxpayers  form  be 
contented  with  an  influence  in  the  affairs  of  the  community 
commensurate  with  the  count  of  heads?  The  magnate  feels 
that  preeminent  ability  and  phenomenally  large  economic  in 
terests  affected  by  the  policy  of  the  State  entitle  him  to  more 
consideration  in  politics  than  is  accorded  a  man  who  has  in 
the  world  at  large  neither  influence,  interest,  nor  position. 
Shall  the  numerical  majority  already  in  control  of  the  State 
refrain  from  using  the  administrative,  legislative,  and  judicial 
branches  of  the  government  to  further  its  aims  in  the  economic 
and  social  war  with  capital  ? 

The  danger  of  the  situation  lies  in  the  fact  that  neither  side 
can  claim  the  support  of  the  original  democratic  premises. 
If  these  assumed  an  essential  equality  of  wealth,  ability,  and 
social  position,  they  also  founded  universal  suffrage  on  the 
assumption  that  the  property  of  the  numerical  majority  was 
greater  in  amount  than  that  of  the  minority;  and  that  the 


NATIONAL  PROBLEMS  401 

almost  universal  possession  of  taxable  property  (a  literal  fact 
in  1830)  would  give  practically  every  one  a  direct  interest  in 
avoiding  extravagance  and  guarding  against  corruption. 
Both  are  no  longer  true.  Not  only  has  the  usabK-  capital  of 
the  community  become  concentrated  in  a  few  hands,  theoreti 
cally  entitled  by  reason  of  their  scanty  numbers  to  no  political 
consideration  at  all,  but  the  control  of  the  political  organs  of 
the  community  lies  necessarily  in  the  hands  of  those  who  as 
non-taxpayers,  non-property  owners,  have  no  direct  interest 
whatever  in  an  economical,  efficient  utilization  of  the  resources 
of  the  country.  What  seemed  the  worst  of  all  possible  even 
tualities  to  the  fathers  of  American  democracy  has  actually 
come  to  pass — the  control  of  the  State  is  now  in  the  hands  of 
those  who  have  no  immediate  financial  interest  in  its  continued; 
existence  or  proper  administration.  Every  man  originally  re-j 
ceived  a  share  in  the  management  of  affairs  because  he  pos 
sessed  a  tangible  financial  interest  in  their  right  conduct. 
The  growth  of  the  industrial  fabric,  of  trusts  and  railroads, 
the  growth  of  cities,  have  literally  destroyed  that  vital  premise 
of  democracy. 

Hence  we  have  seen  attempts,  on  the  whole,  successful,  by 
the  minority  chiefly  interested  in  the  good  conduct  of  affairs, 
to  exert  through  party  machinery  and  subservient  officials 
and  legislatures  more  influence  on  the  policies  of  the  State  and 
the  daily  conduct  of  affairs  than  the  democratic  tenet  of 
equality  entitles  them  to  exercise.  This  minority  has  denied 
the  justice  and  equity  of  permitting  the  numerical  majority 
to  decide  great  issues,  involving  the  status  of  property  and  in 
vestments,  in  accordance  with  what  the  majority  has  con 
ceived  to  be  its  particular  interest,  where  its  interest  obviously 
clashed  with  theirs.  On  the  other  hand,  the  majority  have 
inveighed  against  the  existence  of  large  aggregations  of  capi 
tal  as  " illegal,"  meaning  of  course  undemocratic,  and  have 
viewed  as  corruption  and  wrongdoing  the  attempts  of  capital 
ists  to  exert  an  influence  upon  the  affairs  of  the  State  com 
mensurate  with  the  size  of  their  interests.  Here  the  difficulty 
lies— not  in  the  existence  of  a  battle  between  prejudice  and 


402  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

honesty,  between  democracy  and  oligarchy,  but  in  a  clash  of 
interests  and  a  war  of  prejudices.  Both  minority  and  ma 
jority  are  prejudiced;  each  is  anxious  to  advance  its  interests 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  other;  neither  is  unprejudiced  or  dis 
interested;  to  each  political  power  in  the  other's  hands  seems 
a  menace  to  its  own  existence. 

The  fundamental  difficulty  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  economic 
power  in  the  community  no  longer  rests  with  those  who 
nominally  control  the  state;  the  fundamental  assumption  of 
democracy  was  that  the  two  would  naturally  be  in  the  same 
hands.  Unquestionably,  some  satisfactory  decision  of  this 
oldest  of  governmental  issues  is  the  most  important  question 
before  the  nation  to-day.  Because  it  involves  of  necessity  all 
possible  relations  between  man  and  man,  it  concerns  not  only 
the  happiness  of  the  community  but  its  very  existence.  It  is 
first  and  foremost  a  question  of  the  relation  of  undoubted 
economic  forces  to  the  political  fabric  and  calls  for  an  ad 
justment  of  constitutions  and  theories  to  a  clash  of  interests 
which  is  as  old  as  the  Pyramids  and  as  difficult  of  solution  as 
the  Kiddle  of  the  Sphinx.  The  real  question  to  be  debated 
is  whether  property  and  wealth  as  such  have  a  right  to  any 
influence  in  a  democratic  community,  whether  efficiency, 
ability,  and  the  undoubted  control  of  the  physical  resources 
of  the  country  are  to  count  for  naught  in  deciding  the  more 
immediate  issues  before  the  community.  It  is  a  question  as 
broad  as  the  conception  of  morality,  as  vital  as  the  possession 
of  individual  liberty,  as  deep  as  the  foundations  of  civil  life. 

As  the  result  of  these  changes  and  as  the  necessary  ideas 
upon  which  any  solution  must  be  based,  we  see  emerging  grad 
ually  various  new  notions  of  the  purpose  and  powers  of  the 
existing  parts  of  the  constitutional  fabric.  Where  Jefferson 
looked  upon  government  as  a  negative  force  which  would  be 
more  useful  the  less  it  interfered  with  the  life  of  the  indi 
vidual,  the  present  tendency  is  to  insist  upon  the  positive, 
directive,  formative  influence  the  state  may  exert  upon  the 
lives  of  its  citizens.  We  are  agitating  for  corrective  and  regu 
lative  legislation  on  every  conceivable  subject  from  the  public 


NATIONAL  PROBLEMS  403 

health  and  the  public  morals  to  the  hours  of  labor  and  the 
minimum  wage.  The  assistance  of  the  community  is  to  be 
invoked  to  settle  all  the  perplexed  issues  between  individuals 
or  between  groups  of  individuals.  Gradually,  too,  we  find  the 
authority  of  the  central  government  gaining  in  the  public  esti 
mation  and  believed  to  possess  more  adequate  powers  and  to 
be  better  able  than  State  or  city  to  deal  efficiently  and 
promptly  with  most  problems.  The  great  increase  of  govern 
mental  authority,  which  the  era  of  regulation  demands,  will 
apparently  accrue  almost  entirely  to  the  Federal  government, 
to  the  exclusion  of  State  and  local  governments.  And  it  will, 
furthermore,  break  another  precedent  of  democracy  and  ac 
crue  to  the  executive  rather  than  to  the  legislature.  Com 
mission  government,  expert  advice,  autocratic  power  in  the 
hands  of  the  mayor  have  already  robbed  the  municipal  legis 
latures  of  prominence  and  now  the  State  legislature  and  Con 
gress  seem  likely  to  lose  both  power  and  prestige  in  their 
turn. 

In  still  another  point,  the  new  democracy  is  the  antithesis 
of  the  old.     Jefferson  and  Jackson  built  their  society  on  the 
individual,  for  whose  welfare  the  state  itself  existed,  and  who 
had  perfect  freedom  to  follow  his  own  desires  or  advantage, 
so  far  as  the  law  did  not  explicitly  restrain  him  nor  some  other 
individual  sue  him  successfully  in  the  courts.     The  welfare  of 
the  majority  of  individuals  was  the  highest  aim  of  state 
craft  ;  the  policy  of  the  state  should  be  based  on  the  views  and 
interests  of  the  majority  which  cared  to  vote  at  the  polls ;  the 
minority  had  no  rights  as  against  the  majority,  nor  the  com 
munity  as  a  whole  against  the  individual.     This  excessive  in 
dividualism,  which  in  an  agricultural  community  was  afforded 
few  chances  for  harm,  found  in  the  new  economic  developments 
astounding  opportunities  for  self-aggrandizement  at  the  ex 
pense  of  other  individuals  and  of  the  state  at  large.    To  rob  the 
nation  of  lands  and  mineral  rights,  to  rob  posterity  of  its  for 
ests  and  water  privileges,  to  burden  posterity  with  huge  debts, 
to  destroy  competition  with  the  aid  of  the  tariff,  all  was  easily 
sanctioned  by  the  notion  that  the  community  had  no  rights  as 


404  THE  RISE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

against  individuals  because  its  rights  were  merely  the  sum  of 
theirs.  We  have  come  to  see  that  the  truly  national  ideal,  the 
truly  democratic  ideal,  is  the  good  of  the  whole  people  and 
that  only  by  the  fullest  protection  of  the  rights  of  the  minority 
and  of  that  greater  entity,  the  State  itself,  can  a  great  and  free 
people  attain  in  the  highest  degree,  "  Liberty  and  Union,  now 
and  forever,  one  and  inseparable." 


THE  END 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Adams,  Jotfn,  56,  97,  98,  113,  114, 
117,  120,  126,  141,  180,  194. 

Adams,  Samuel,  96-99,  101,  179. 

Anti-Slavery,  rise  of,  245-6;  com 
pared  with  pro-slavery  argu 
ment,  246-8;  relation  to  the 
outbreak  of  war  in  1861,  246; 
escaping  slaves  aided  by  advo 
cates  of,  264-5. 

Armada,  significance  in  American 
History  of  defeat  of,  18-19. 

Balboa,  12. 

Boston,  settlement  of,  25;  in  co 
lonial  times,  50-54,  56,  62-7; 
in  the  Revolution,  93,  94,  96- 
106. 

Brown,  John,  in  Kansas,  273;  raid 
of,  280-1. 

Bunker  Hill,  battle  of,  94,  97,  98, 
104-106,  137. 

Calhoun,  John  C.,  in  the  War  of 
1812,  206;  views  upon  conflict 
ing  interests  of  sections,  215; 
Exposition  of,  221-2;  democratic 
ideas  of,  234;  against  Compro 
mise  in  1850,  267;  counsels  war 
with  the  North,  266,  289  and 
note,  295;  death  of,  268. 

Canada,  French  colonies  in,  74-6; 
results  of  conquest  of  by  the 
English,  78-9;  attempts  to  an 
nex  to  United  States,  199  and 
note,  206 ;  boundary  settled  with 
United  States,  262. 

Capitalists,  part  played  by  in  col 
onization,  20;  origin  of  in 
colonial  America,  43-4;  at 
tacked  during  Revolution,  95-6, 
111-116;  difficulties  of  during 


Critical  Period,  140-5,  152-7; 
support  strong  central  govern 
ment,  1787-90,  160,  184-5,  196- 
7;  support  protective  tariff, 
215-219,  221;  alone  profit  from 
slavery  at  South,  241-5; 
strength  of  at  the  North  due  to 
manufactures,  249-250;  effects 
of  Civil  War  upon,  350-9;  effects 
of  nationalization  of  industry 
upon,  399-403. 

Civil  War,  1861-65,  place  in  Amer 
ican  History  of,  9-10,  18;  fun 
damental  causes  of,  282-6; 
immediate  causes  of,  284-296; 
outbreak  of,  297-307;  military 
aspects  of,  308-316;  why  won 
by  the  North,  317-339;  results 
of,  340-359;  results  on  the 
North,  340-351;  on  economic 
condition  of  the  South.  351-9. 

Clay,  Henry,  in  War  of  1812,  206; 
responsible  for  the  "American 
System,"  216-218;  on  union  in 
1820,  220;  on  elections  of  1824 
and  1832,  232-4;  creator  of  leg 
islative  system  in  House  of  Rep 
resentatives,  236-7;  on  slavery 
in  border  States,  244;  on  Com 
promise  of  1850,  267;  death  of, 
268. 

Colonists,  character  of,  Spanish, 
13-14;  French,  16;  English,  26, 
33-7;  Dutch,  27-8. 

Columbus,  11,  17. 

Commerce,  colonial,  38-44,  73,  81- 
4,  93;  after  the  Revolution, 
152-5;  interstate  commerce  af 
ter  1783,  155-6;  foreign  com 
merce  after  1783,  163-4,  183, 
196-200,  205,  211-216. 
407 


408 


INDEX 


Committees  of  Correspondence,  97- 
104,  107-8,  114-116. 

Companies,  joint-stock  or  trading, 
19,  20,  22,  24,  25,  50-5. 

Compromise,  Missouri,  218-220, 
259,  270,  271,  274;  on  tariff  and 
Bank,  227-228;  of  1850,  262-9; 
attempts  in  1860  and  1861,  299- 
302;  meaning  of  in  American 
History,  284-7. 

Concord,  battle  of,  103-4,  124,  137. 

Confederacy,  Southern,  early  pro 
posals  of,  223,  266,  282-4; 
causes  of  formation  of  in  1860, 
284-296;  formation  of,  297-9; 
negotiates  with  United  States 
government  in  1861,  303-4;  mili 
tary  aspects  of  war  with  North, 
308-316;  why  defeated  in,  317- 
339;  administrative  weaknesses 
of,  324-5,  326-9 ;  economic  weak 
ness  of,  325-6;  financial  mis 
management  of,  329-331. 

Confederation,  government  under 
the  Articles  of,  122,  147,  148, 
159-162,  196. 

Constitution,  causes  of  its  adop 
tion,  116,  145-167;  precedent 
for  the  form  of,  120,  168;  pro 
visions  of,  168-179;  adoption  of, 
179-181;  interpretation  of  in 
1830,  223-7;  expansion  of,  1789- 
1829,  229-239;  made  a  national 
bond  by  Civil  War,  340-2,  345. 

Cotton,  beginning  of  production 
of,  212-213;  growth  of  culture 
of,  241-5;  method  of  cultivation 
of,  242,  255;  creates  new  inter 
est  in  western  lands,  243-4,  255, 
257 ;  extension  of  territory  de 
manded,  257-260,  262-4,  267, 
270-271,  286-8;  relation  of  to 
secession  in  1860,  292-4,  317; 
why  it  did  not  decide  the  Civil 
War  in  favor  of  the  South,  322- 
4;  results  of  the  Civil  War  upon 
the  culture  of,  351-3,  372-3, 
388-9,  391. 
Creditor  class,  origin  of,  43^4;  in 


Revolution,  95-6,  111-116;  in 
Critical  Period,  140-5,  152-7, 
160;  after  the  adoption  of  the 
Constitution,  184-5,  196-7. 
Currency  Problem,  colonial,  82; 
during  Critical  Period,  142-4, 
149,  151,  152,  156,  157,  163; 
Hamilton's  solution  of,  188-190; 
Jacksonian  solution  of,  227-8; 
at  South  during  the  Civil  War, 
329-331;  after  Civil  War,  362, 
381;  final  solution  of,  393-5. 

Davis,  Jefferson,  266,  268;  on 
causes  of  the  Civil  War,  284-5, 
294;  election  as  President  of  the 
Confederacy,  298;  as  President, 
304,  323,  324,  327-9,  331-3. 

Debtor  class,  origin  of,  43-4;  in 
Revolution,  95-6,  111-116;  in 
Critical  Period,  140-5,  152-7, 
159-160. 

Declaration  of  Independence,  a 
statement  of  existing  fact,  55, 
118-119;  passage  of,  117-118. 

Democracy  colonial,  45-58;  in 
1787,  169-179;  Jeffersonian,  195, 
229,  230,  234-5,  238;  Webster 
on,  225-7,  235-6;  Jacksonian, 
229,  230,  234-5,  238;  develop 
ment  of,  1789-1850,  229-239;  ef 
fect  of  immigration  upon,  238, 
397-9;  effect  of  nationalization 
of  industry  upon,  399-402;  new 
aspects  of,  402-404. 

Democratic  Party,  against  Civil 
War  at  the  North,  337-8;  its 
attitude  on  Reconstruction,  376, 
381,  384,  385;  at  the  South  after 
Reconstruction,  3j|f-388. 

Dickinson,  John,  93*4. 

Douglas,  S.  A.,  268;  on  Kansas, 
270,  272,  274  and  note;  debates 
with  Lincoln,  277-9;  supports 
Federal  government,  1861,  '305. 

Dred  Scott  Case,  265,  275-7. 

Economic  and  geographical  influ 
ences  on  history  of  the  United 


INDEX 


409 


States,  on  colonial  history,  5, 
26,  37,  38,  43,  44,  72;  on  the 
Revolution,  93,  111-114,  131- 
139;  on  the  formation  of  the 
Constitution,  158-166;  on  the 
War  of  1812,  206;  explain  dif 
ferences  between  the  sections  in 
1860,  252-5,  284-5;  influence  of 
on  the  Civil  War,  308-316,  322- 
3,  352-4;  make  for  nationality, 
347-350,  395-6. 

Emancipation  of  the  Negro,  agita 
tion  for,  245-6,  300,  321;  procla 
mation  of,  321,  354-6;  result  of 
upon  Reconstruction,  361,  363, 
366,  370-4,  382-6;  from  eco 
nomic  bondage,  388-390. 

Emigration,  causes  of  European, 
19-22,  24-5,  33-37. 

Exploration  of  North  America,  in 
centive  to,  1-4;  by  Spanish,  11- 
16;  by  French,  16;  by  English, 
16-18,  21-26. 

Fisheries,  29;  colonies  excluded 
from  in  1775,  102;  after  1783, 
148,  151,  153,  159,  197,  201-2. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  biography 
and  character,  59-60;  in  the 
Revolution,  64,  92-3,  113,  120-2, 
131,  140,  149,  171,  181. 

French  Revolution,  influence  of  on 
the  history  of  the  United  States, 
183,  193,  197-9. 

French  colonies,  causes  of  weak 
ness  of,  16,  74,  75;  result  of  cap 
ture  of  by  English,  74,  76. 

Fur-trade,  25,  29,  35,  258. 

Geographical  influences  on  United 
States  history,  see  Economic  In 
fluences,  etc. 

George  III,  64,  77,  83,  84,  90,  93, 
100,  101,  109,  129-130. 

Grant,  U.  S.,  as  General,  314-316, 
333,  337-8;  as  President,  381. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  on  vices  of 
the  Confederation,  160;  on  the 


Constitution,  168,  178,  180;  es 
tablishes  new  administration, 
182-192;  later  years  of,  193,  194 
208. 

Hayne,  R.  Y.,  debate  with  Webster, 
223-4. 

Huguenots,  16,  22. 

Independence,  growth  of  idea  of, 
94,  96,  106-118;  Declaration  of. 
see  Declaration. 

Indians,  condition  of  in  Sixteenth 
Century,  14-15;  treatment  ol  by 
Spaniards,  15;  relations  of  Eng 
lish  with,  23,  26-7,  76-7;  rela 
tions  of  to  United  States,  258, 
271. 

Internal  Improvements,  demanded 
by  the  West,  214-215,  220-221, 
227. 

Iroquois,  14,  16,  27,  29,  74,  75. 

Jackson,  Andrew,  at  New  Orleans, 
210;  favors  the  Union,  226-7; 
democratic  ideas  of,  229,  230, 
238;  in  campaigns  of  1824  and 
1828,  232-4. 

Jamestown,  settlement  of,  11,  23, 
28. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  65,  84,  87,  US, 
177;  life  and  personality,  193- 
4;  ideas  of,  195;  as  President, 
204,  205,  207,  230. 

Kansas-Nebraska  Bill,  the  Crime 
against  Kansas,  270-^1. 

Lee,  Robert  E.,  309,  311,  314-316, 
324,  328,  333. 

Lewis  and  Clark  expedition,  17. 

Lexington,  battle  of,  103-4,  107, 
124. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  debates  with 
Douglas,  277-9;  election  of,  in 
1860,  296;  on  causes  of  the  Civil 
War,  285;  on  the  object  of  the 
War,  321;  as  President,  302- 
306,  319,  334-9;  the  father  of 


410 


INDEX 


American  Nationality,  340,  344- 
5;  influence  of  the  assassination 
of,  358;  Reconstruction  policy 
of,  366-7;  quoted,  8,  9,  322,  341, 
347-8,  360. 

Louisiana,  Purchase  of,  38,  203- 
205,  208,  218-219,  259,  262. 

Loyalists,  in  the  Revolution,  92-3, 
100-101,  106-108,  112,  114-116, 
154. 

Madison,  James,  150,  180,  190, 
282. 

Magellan,  12. 

Manufactures,  in  colonial  period, 
38;  during  War  of  1812,  213- 
214;  after  War  of  1812,  211, 
212,  215-218,  248-251;  policy  of 
protection  of  adopted,  215-2181, 
221;  statistics  of  in  1860,  North 
and  South,  291-292;  effect  of 
Civil  War  upon  at  North,  318- 
320;  at  South,  391;  nationaliza 
tion  of,  397. 

Marshall,  John,  Chief  Justice,  178, 
194,  237-8. 

Massachusetts,  founding  of,  25; 
origin  of  town  and  state  gov 
ernment  in,  46-8,  50-4,  56; 
States'  sovereignty  in,  62-4,  65- 
7;  opposition  to  Navigation 
Acts,  68-9;  in  the  Revolution, 
96-106,  107;  in  the  Critical 
Period,  158,  180;  in  the  Civil 
War,  305-6. 

Mexican  War,  1846,  257-262. 

Missouri  Compromise,  1820,  218- 
220,  259,  270-271,  274. 

Nationality,  American,  the  essence 
of  American  history  lies  in  the 
achieving  of,  5,  6;  slowness  of 
attainment,  7,  8;  no  fundamen 
tal  obstacles  to,  55;' foundations 
of  in  independence  laid  by 
Washington,  59;  strength  of  the 
sentiment  against,  in  1760,  71- 
2;  in  1775,  92,  125-7;  in  Crit 
ical  Period,  144-8,  170-1;  in 


1787,  190-2;  in  1812-14,  207- 
210;  in  1819-20,  219-220;  in 
1824-32,  223-6;  adopted  as  basis 
of  Constitution,  172-4,  179; 
Webster,  the  prophet  of,  225-7, 
235-6 ;  subconscious  beginnings 
of,  1830-60,  239-240;  belief  in 
at  the  North  a  great  factor  in 
1860,  301;  "created"  by  the 
Civil  War,  340-350;  Lincoln's 
relation  to,  340,  344-5;  geo 
graphical  forces  making  for, 
347-350;  Lincoln's  appreciation 
of,  347-81  notes;  Reconstruction 
last  obstacle  to,  365,  387-8; 
present  problems  of,  396-404. 

Navigation  Acts,  in  colonial  times, 
41,  42,  68,  73,  78;  probable  re 
sults  in  1765  of  enforcement  of, 
81-4;  enforcement  of  after  1783, 
153-5,  199,  205. 

Negro,  Problem  of,  during  Recon 
struction,  361,  363,  366,  370-4, 
382-6 ;  since  Reconstruction, 
388-390.  See  also  Slavery, 
Slave-Trade,  Cotton. 

New  Amsterdam,  27-8. 

New  England,  settlement  of,  24-6; 
reasons  for  permanence  of,  26- 
30;  plans  secession,  1804-1815, 
202-203,  207-210. 

North,  The,  national  position  of 
in  1861,  9;  beginning  of  cleft 
with  the  South,  159,  282-3;  at 
titude  towards  tariff,  215-218, 
221;  attitude  towards  slavery, 
246-8,  269 ;  development  of  man 
ufactures  in,  248-51;  influence 
of  geographical  conditions  upon, 
252-5,  256 ;  attitude  towards  the 
South  and  slavery,  246-81,  266- 
281;  compared  with  the  South 
in  1860,  290-4;  stands  for  union 
in  1861,  301-2,  305-6;  party  at 
in  favor  of  the  South  in  1861, 
301,  303-4,  334-5;  war  with  the 
Confederacy,  308-316;  why  vic 
torious,  317-339;  economic  ef 
fects  of  War  upon,  318-20,  339, 


INDEX 


411 


350-1;  results  of  War  upon, 
340-351;  attitude  towards  Re 
construction,  358-60,  364,  366, 
371. 

Nullification,  anti-national,  8,  146- 
8,  161-2,  201-2,  205,  208-9,  219- 
220,  223-8,  235-6. 

People,  American,  meaning  of  their 
history,  1-10;  relation  of  the 
people  to  the  nation,  5-6;  char 
acter  of  in  1787,  169-72;  Con 
stitution  makes  sovereign,  172- 
76;  Constitution  places  checks 
on  power  of,  176-9;  Webster 
proves  that  Constitution  de 
clares  sovereign,  225-7,  235-6; 
character  of  in  1840,  240;  effect 
of  Civil  War  upon,  344-7,  349, 
353,  355. 

Pilgrims,  24-5,  28. 

Population,  growth  of,  32,  140, 
162,  290-1;  effect  on  democracy, 
45-6,  48-54,  238,  397-8. 

Railroads,  influence  of  in  develop 
ment  of  country  before  1860, 
249-252;  influence  on  conduct  of 
Civil  War,  310,  313-314;  influ 
ence  in  deciding  Civil  War,  318, 
321,  325-6;  as  nationalizers, 
349-50;  nationalization  of,  397. 

Reconstruction,  problem  of,  358- 
366;  Presidential  Reconstruc 
tion,  366-8;  causes  of  Congres 
sional,  369-376;  measures  of 
Congressional,  376-381 ;  attitude 
of  North  towards,  358-60,  364, 
366,  371;  attitude  of  South  to 
wards,  367,  373-6,  381-6;  re 
sults  of  on  South,  381-6;  last 
obstacle  in  way  of  nationality, 
365. 

Representation,  ideas  of  in  Amer 
ica  and  England  contrasted,  88- 
9;  progress  of  ideas  about  in 
America,  175,  234,  238,  281, 
382-7. 

Republican    Party,    formation    of, 


275;  attitude  of  in  1861,  302; 
result  of  winning  of  War  upon, 
358-9,  364,  369,  375-6;  Con 
gressional  Reconstruction  in 
tended  to  secure  supremacy  of, 
375-8,  381-2,  384-5;  at  the 
South  during  Reconstruction, 
382-7. 

Revolution,  causes  of,  31-2,  38,  45, 
56-8,  73-91;  outbreak  of,  92- 
105;  problem  of  organization 
during,  106-122;  why  we  won, 
123-139;  lack  of  popular  sup 
port  for,  106-116,  125-7,  140-2; 
results  of,  140-150. 


Secession,  anti-national,  8;  in 
West,  1786-1803,  202;  in  Con 
stitutional  Convention,  282-4 ; 
in  Virginia,  1789,  283;  in  New 
England,  1804-1815,  202-3,  207- 
210,  284;  discussion  of,  1819- 
20,  220,  284;  at  the  South,  1828, 
223-7;  at  the  South,  1848-60, 
266-7,  295-6;  causes  of  in  1860- 
61,  282-294;  relation  of  to  slav 
ery,  284-290;  consummation  of, 
1861,  297-9;  effect  of  on  Recon 
struction,  366-7. 

Seward,  W.  H.,  267-8,  303-4,  337. 

Silver,  from  Peru,  a  cause  of  the 
colonization  of  America,  13,  20; 
from  Nevada,  helps  solution  of 
currency  problem,  394;  Free  Sil 
ver  agitation,  395. 

Slave-trade,  in  colonial  times,  40, 
59;  revival  of  urged  from  1857- 
9,  260-1,  280;  in  District  of  Co 
lumbia,  265-7. 

Slavery,  in  colonial  times,  40,  49; 
influence  of  cotton  upon,  213, 
218,  241-5;  extension  of  mooted, 
218,  243-4,  257-268;  argument 
for  extension  of,  257-260,  263, 
270-1 ;  argument  against  exten 
sion  of,  261,  264,  269-270,  277- 
9;  Pro-  and  Anti-slavery  views 
compared,  245-8;  fugitive  slaves, 


412 


INDEX 


264-5 ;  geographical  influences 
encouraging  extension  of,  252-6; 
Lincoln's  views  on,  277-9;  con 
nection  with  secession,  246,  284- 
290;  Confederacy  based  on,  299; 
attempts  to  compromise  difficul 
ties  on,  1861,  299-302;  results 
of  the  War  upon,  351-3;  abol 
ished  as  undemocratic,  354; 
abolition  of,  321,  354-6,  368. 

Smith,  Captain  John,  23. 

Spanish,  exploration  and  coloniza 
tion  by,  4-5,  11-16. 

Smuggling  trade  with  the  West 
Indies,  42-3,  78-9,  81-4,  152-5. 

South,  The,  position  in  1861  anti- 
national,  8-9;  beginning  of  cleft 
with  the  North,  159,  282-3; 
origin  of  "peculiar  institutions" 
of,  212-213,  215,  218,  219;  real 
difficulties  of  economic,  222, 
322-6,  351-4,  388-391;  effect  of 
cotton  and  slavery  on,  244-5, 
351-4;  influence  of  fundamental 
geographical  conditions  upon, 
252-5;  attitude  towards  the 
North  and  secession,  1848-60, 
266,  268-296;  compared  with 
the  North  in  1860,  290-4;  se 
cedes  in  1S61,  297-9;  party  fa 
voring  union  at,  301,  303-4,  339; 
war  with  the  North,  308-316; 
why  defeated  in,  317-339;  re 
sults  of  Civil  War  upon,  340- 
357;  reconstruction  of,  360-381; 
results  of  Reconstruction  upon, 
382-7;  solution  of  economic 
problems  of,  388-391. 

Stamp  Act,  82-4. 

State  governments,  origin  of,  50- 
58;  new  Revolutionary  constitu 
tions  for,  119-120;  part  played 
by  in  Revolution,  116-119;  in 
Critical  Period,  144-151,  155- 
158,  162-3;  refunding  debts  of, 
186;  in  War  of  1812,  207-210; 
relation  of  to  Federal  govern 
ment  discussed  by  Webster  and 
Hayne,  223-7;  new  democracy 


in,  1830-60,  229-239.  See  also 
States'  sovereignty. 

States'  sovereignty,  anti-national, 
8-9;  in  colonial  times,  61-72; 
before  the  Revolution,  79-80, 
87-8,  92;  during  the  Revolu 
tion,  108,  116-119;  in  Critical 
Period,  144-8,  160-2;  Constitu 
tion  intended  to  abolish,  172-4, 
179;  belief  in,  about  1800,  190- 
3;  1S04-15,  202,,  203,  207-210, 
219  note;  discussion  of  by 
Hayne  and  Webster,  223-8,  235- 
6;  geographical  factors  favor 
ing,  255-6,  348-9,  353;  belief 
in  at  South,  1850-60,  268;  rela 
tion  to  secession,  284-6,  291; 
party  at  the  North  in  favor  of, 
1861,  294,  303-4;  Confederate 
constitution  establishes,  298 ; 
Confederate  government  in 
fringes,  331-3;  destroyed  by  the 
Civil  War,  340-350;  during  Re 
construction,  361-2,  366-7,  370- 
1,  378;  final  disappearance  of 
probable,  395-6. 

Suffrage,  limited  in  1787,  89,  175; 
manhood  by  1840,  234,  238;  ne 
gro,  381-7. 

Sumter,  Fort,  firing  on  the  casus 
belli  in  1861,  285,  304-5,  307. 

Tariff,  38,  187;  origin  of  protective 
tariff,  215-218,  221;  Southern 
opinion  of,  221-3;  Compromise 
tariff,  227;  imposed  by  Confed 
erate  government,  331. 

Tobacco,  in  Virginia,  29;  method 
of  cultivation,  48'-9. 

Union,  schemes  for  in  colonial 
times,  69-71;  idea  of  during  the 
Revolution,  92,  106-122;  in  Crit 
ical  Period,  145-151;  forces 
working  for,  1783-7,  158-166; 
forces  working  against,  1804- 
1815,  202-3,  207-210;  its  mean 
ing  and  value  discussed,  1815- 
1848,  219-220,  223-6;  De  Toe- 


INDEX 


413 


queville  on,  226;  sentiment  re 
garding  at  South,  1848-60,  266, 
268-296;  sentiment  regarding 
at  the  North,  1848-60,  267-296; 
North  stands  for  in  1861,  301, 
302,  305-6;  party  at  South  in 
favor  of,  1861,  301,  303-4,  334- 
8;  Civil  War  makes  adhesion  to 
universal,  340-350;  Reconstruc 
tion  last  obstacle  to,  365,  387-8. 
United  States,  place  of  its  history 
in  universal  "history,  1;  in  Eu 
ropean  history,  2;  achieving  of 
nationality  chief  fact  in  the  his 
tory  of,  5;  definition  of  history 
of,  18. 

Virginia,  settlement  of,  22-4;  rea 
sons  for  permanence  of,  26-30; 
land  claims  of,  164-6;  opposi 
tion  to  Constitution  in,  179, 
180,  283;  Resolutions  of  1798, 
202;  on  Compromise  of  1850, 
266;  secession  of,  306;  cam 
paigns  in,  1861-65,  308-311, 
314-316. 

War  of  1812,  causes  of,  196-206; 
why  United  States  was  defeated 
in,  206-7;  results  of,  211-218; 
attitude  of  New  England  to 
wards,  202-3,  207-210. 

Washington,  George,  early  life  and 
character,  58-9;  in  the  Revolu 
tion,  109,  113,  117,  121-139, 
190;  as  President,  180-2;  de 
scription  by  Ames,  181;  quoted, 


6,  110,  121,  124-139,  141,  145, 
149,  150,  157,  162,  181,  182. 

Webster,  Daniel,  in  the  War  of 
1812,  206;  "1830  Speech,"  225- 
7;  Prophet  of  American  Nation 
ality,  225-7,  235-6,  345;  on  the 
Mexican  War,  261 ;  on  the  Com 
promise  of  1850,  267;  death  of, 
268;  quoted,  8. 

Western  lands,  in  1780,  164-5; 
1815-30,  214-215,  220-1,  227; 
cotton  creates  new  interest  in, 
243-4,  255;  development  of  by 
the  railroads,  249,  252;  reasons 
for  the  desire  to  extend  slavery 
to,  257-9,  263,  270-1;  develop 
ment  of  since  1865,  393-6. 

West  Indies,  vital  importance  of, 
38,  196;  colonial  trade  with, 
38-44,  73;  fear  of  loss  of  trade 
with  one  cause  of  the  Revolu 
tion,  81-4,  93;  results  of  loss 
of  trade  with  after  1783,  152-5, 
196-8,  201-2,  205;  prosperity  of 
destroyed,  242. 

West,  The,  ideas  of  secession  in, 
201-2,  205;  development  of, 
214-5,  252,  257-60;  influence  of 
geographical  conditions  upon, 
252-5;  development  of,  1840-60, 
decisive  in  effect  of  the  Civil 
War,  318,  321;  stands  for  the 
Union,  1861,  312-314,  317-318, 
321 ;  welded  to  the  North  by  the 
War,  345-6. 

Wilson,  James,  influential  in  fram 
ing  the  Constitution,  172-3,  190. 

Winthrop,  John,  21,  25,  52,  53,  50. 


14  DAY  USE 

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